Today, we go to Kuranda, a mountain village, well-known for its Scenic Railway, and the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway.
We had had some rain (this is the tropics, and the season for rain), and they had to close the Scenic Railway, because there was erosion on the tracks. So, instead of the railway, we used the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway. It was quite impressive. It would have been even more so if we could have seen much, but it was raining — it is the rainforest, after all.
Kinda like this…
There were stages to the Skyrail, and we stopped off at a couple of them to view the scenery.
The second stop was to view Barron Falls, in flood:
Pretty impressive falls!
At the top, we were bussed to the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary:
It was very well set out. We went into an enclosure with lots of tropical plants, and an amazing number of butterflies flying around. It was hard to take photos of them, because they simply wouldn’t stay still for the camera!
The lady who did the presentations was very good, and we went into an area where they were breeding caterpillars, and saw quite a few Chrysalises.
Next, we went to Kuranda Koala Gardens, “a boutique wildlife attraction, located in the world famous Kuranda rainforest village”. It wasn’t very big, so we walked around it quite quickly.
The real enticement here was to have the opportunity to cuddle a koala, and have a photo taken of it. This can only be done in Queensland, as it’s illegal in the other Aussie states. So, after we had lunch at Frog’s Restaurant, we returned for our photo op (others did it, too):
We were given very specific instructions on how to hold the koala, and told not to squeeze, etc. Since koalas seem to sleep most of the day, and it was their rest period, they were quite calm.
After a browse through the Kuranda market, where there were many different vendors of tee-shirts, and other stuff, we returned to our bus, and made our way back to Cairns.
