Sydney to Cairns – Part Five

One flight later, the plane was swooping low over the Great Barrier Reef on the final approach into Cairns. I was blown away by the sight of the tropical hills and the turquoise ocean. After two years of hard graft I had finally stumbled upon the Australia they show in the adverts.

“Enjoy your stay,” the lady next to me smiled, an extremely friendly type. “Watch out after dark for the Aborigines.”

The weather was muggy and tropical, the airport small. The sun shone down on beautiful green hills. I got a lift into town, to a hostel who offered me a private room for $30 a night. This was an incredible bargain. I changed into shorts and sandals and hit the seafront. Cairns is a delight with its natural beauty and laid-back pace. It’s a backpacker town and the premier staging point for day trips to the Barrier Reef.

When in Rome... my first act was to book myself on a diving trip. My second act was to head to the night market and chow down on a monster plate of food from the Asian food court. Forget the cheese plate in the sea – this was decadence. Too full to finish my last piece of hoi sin octopus, I wandered through the market, marvelling at the cheap prices. I had a quiet evening. Revellers down the corridor kept me awake and there were lots of mosquitoes in the room. At least I had my own fridge though.

I’d never so much as snorkelled before so the diving trip promised to be something completely new. There were dozens of boats competing for the tourist trade. Finding the one I booked with was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Our boat carried fifty or so passengers. After an hour and a half of sailing through calm seas, giant turquoise streaks appeared under the sparkling blue waters. We were at the edge of the reef.

If I made a habit of wearing spandex I dare say I’d feel right at home in a wetsuit. However this was the first time I’d zipped one up and it seemed a little tight. I felt like James Bond. The boat came to a halt and our group went snorkelling. I learnt the basics of breathing through my mask and working the flippers while gazing down at colourful swathes of coral and shoals of rainbow fish. It was great to see these things in the flesh, although you wonder how much tourism is destroying their habitat.

Next came a scuba dive, with an oxygen tank, to a depth of five metres. One by one we got kitted up like spacemen and dropped off the back of the boat into the water. I got much closer to the corals, and was allowed to touch a big purple thing on the sea bed shaped like a clam. It felt very velvety and flinched at my touch.

I was guided through this dive by a Japanese girl. Most of the guides, and a lot of the tourists, were Japanese. A Japanese guy with an underwater camera swam down to take my souvenir photo. It was all a bit Disneyland. I could barely recognise myself in the picture as I looked very Japanese with the mask on. This seemed to be a strange consequence of the water pressure.

The boat returned to shore at the end of the afternoon and I set out to explore some more of Cairns. Cairns is by the ocean but there is no beach – just miles of empty mud-flats dotted with crocodiles. The Esplanade has an outdoor lagoon and an array of wood and metal bars for morning push-ups. My explorations didn’t take much time.

On Lindsay’s recommendation I tried a Chinese massage at the night market – suffice to say it was the Bohemian Rhapsody of massages. The man even planted a strange-smelling plaster on the vertebrae of my back to ease the tension. That was $15 well-spent.

Next day I went to see the tropical rainforests of Cape Tribulation. A lovely Aussie girl picked everyone up in a minibus. As we drove through Cairns we spotted fire engines and masses of smoke billowing from a burning house. The morning’s newspaper told of another house burning down. Fires seem to break out a lot in Cairns. Perhaps the cane toads like to chew through wiring.

As we drove up the coast, past an empty nudist beach, our guide told us about Australia. Some of the foreign tourists hadn’t heard of Neighbours. She wasted no time pointing out that she despised the show. I would have loved her to have met my Neighbours-mad Blackpool friends. There would have been a passionate exchange of views.

Our first port of call was a cruise on the Daintree River. We saw crocodiles lurking in the mangroves, but the main fascination for me was a German tourist who was videoing the entire voyage on his camcorder. He was possibly the most German-looking person I have ever seen. He wore a bumbag, sandals with socks, and sported a Rudi Voller moustache and an Italia 90 permed mullet. He was on holiday with his kids. What fantastic trip was he the Holiday Dad for?

The clouds didn’t break all day but the trip was interesting. Next we went for a walk in the rainforest, followed by a free lunch of child-sized fish ‘n’ chips at a beach resort. I sat with a Dutchman and a Portuguese guy who had been visiting Sydney on a business trip from Amsterdam university. Talk about a convoluted story – the introductions took us a full five minutes.

This was as far north as tarmac roads go – there are many miles of untouched rainforest north of Cooktown – so we started to head south again. A car ferry brought us back over the spooky Daintree River, which our guide told us was home of at least one croc-related fatality every year. It reminded me of our family holidays in Cornwall, with the added twist that if you stuck your hand out of the window you might die.

Finally we had a brief stop in the yuppie haven of Port Douglas. Its church has a three-year waiting list for weddings. The beautiful landscape appeared rather drab under the constipated grey sky. How I cursed those clouds for tainting my photos. I bought some homemade iced tea from a cafe and it was rubbish. Literally just Tetley’s with ice cubes in it.

I'd seen reef and rainforest during my brief stay in Cairns. All sight-seeing boxes were ticked. I cut a rather forlorn figure wandering round town that evening. Travelling by myself – something I once did without blinking – had lost its allure. Time to go home and put the kettle on surely? This was the evening when my friends flew home from Melbourne, and I too would soon be heading back to everyday life.

Next morning, the sunshine was back to send me off on a high. I finished a monster cooked breakfast at the hostel and caught the shuttle bus to the airport. The driver told me it was his birthday. Mine was following a few days after his and I would be working too. I’d found a cheap Qantas deal that took me back to Perth in two flights, via, of all places, Uluru!

The aerial photos I got of the mountains and desert were spectacular. Uluru lies maybe ten kilometres from its airport, close enough for incoming planes to see the glower on its face like a disapproving in-law. I was fortunate enough to be bathed in its orange scowl at very close quarters last year. You’re never quite the same afterwards.

After a brief wait in the tiny terminal, it was time to board the same plane with the same stewardesses for the final leg of my journey. It’s a real feat to visit Cairns, Uluru and Perth all in one day.

Landing back at Perth airport, a mere fourteen days after leaving for Sydney, I felt rejuvenated and alive. Truly this was the best holiday I’d ever been on.

For more Cairns photos and aerial shots see my Facebook album here.