Cairns is a very easy city to navigate. The esplanade curling round the water’s edge, the main Street leads perpendicularly down. Similar to Darwin it has a lagoon at the water’s edge. High 20s with a wind, it is beautifully warm without feeling hot.
We’ve done well exploring the area. I got to play with my love for digital macro in the Botanical Gardens…
We felt very healthy after doing the steep red arrow walk round Mt Whitfield…
We visited the nearby hippie market stall town of Kuranda via the Kuranda Scenic Rail train returning on the skyrail. Beautiful scenery, a random, out of place Scottish shop playing a cd full of bagpipes left me in disbelief!
We spent a lovely day at Green Island where we snorkelled the reef, and after seeing them from above I finally got to swim alongside a turtle! Amazing!
We saw a nice little beach up the Coast called Palm Cove (a big police presence, some delegates from the G20 must have been staying there)…
We took a day trip to the beautiful Port Douglas
I had an indulgent day trip to Cape York, the northernmost point of mainland Australia!
We’ve also wandered Cairns’ markets and found the big Barramundi in Daintree! Not bad going eh? 😉
Learning that the torch for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games commenced being carried from Cairns, the importance sugar cane has held for Cairns’ economy, the stories of quite a few plane crashes, that the eyes of a fish turn white when they are cooked and that you really shouldn’t venture into mud like ground… Your thongs will most definitely get stuck, and if you try and pull your leg out, your thongs will break… Ah well… At least I provided Ariel and Ben some entertainment…! Then got very hot feet walking to Target to buy new ones ;-). Which ultimately I think are the least comfortable pair I have ever owned!
Getting used to travelling with someone, and how to fairly split spendings, it is an entirely different experience than before. Spending five days in a hostel (much cheaper prices here than other big cities), meeting up with Ariel, a friend from the poultry farm I collected eggs on in Western Australia, she had room in her flat share for the two of us for only $105 a week each. Sold. Jobhunting between all of our sightseeing, I’ve found a job in a roadhouse southwest from Cairns. That funny old thing called instinct saying this is the right direction and it making sense geographically, always favouring the road less travelled, we’ll head off and see what happens…! 🙂
Scottish Footprints 
Gorgeous photos! You are making me wish I were back in Cairns right now!