Just a warning: I took a lot of pictures this day!
Every thing we read or heard said that we should not miss the chance to visit the "market" (aka "tourist shopping") town of Kuranda. They weren't wrong! It was a beautiful day. We took the train up the mountain.
The old train station had a bit of museum that we looked around...
This is a foldable sink! Clever, isn't it. WHEN I have an rv, this might be a good idea...
Here is our train...
It was fun. I've always wanted to travel by train...
Especially through country like this...
This route has lots of bending bridges, which was evidently quite remarkable when it was built in the late 1880s.
We had a stop at Barron Falls, which was breathtaking, even at low flow.
We arrived at Kuranda! It's a beautiful little town.
I loved these little stone turtles and platypuses inlaid in the sidewalks. Someday when I have a garden...
K tried on a legit Aussie hat...
Beautiful flowers everywhere. I'm not sure what variety of heliconia these are, but they are gorgeous!
We got to try some roo meat pies.
We went for a walk in the woods. I loved the board walk trails everywhere.
We saw one of these snakes in the jungle, out slithering next to us...
Random wrecked plane shipped in for atmosphere.
I met a lady who had adopted a dingo pup! She was so sweet and sooo cute.
Then K and I went to a zoo there in Kuranda.
We saw "freshies."
These native lizards are many Aussie kids' first pet.
Then the main attraction: the Koalas!!!! These have to be the absolute cutest creatures ever. And a pretty nice life. They sleep.
We got to cuddle a koala! It was funny. The koalas have strict limits on their working hours. They are only allowed to cuddle for a half hour a day. Then they are placed by the worker on the specially made trees with fresh branches of eucalyptus within reach of their mouth, so they don't ever actually have to move on their own... The zoo has a eucalyptus plantation that grows prime varieties just for these koalas. They have the life...
It was so cute, and very cuddly. I loved it.
Here's a wombat!
I got to feed a kangaroo!
K feeding the roos.
I took a picture of this sign, one of the animals they had at this zoo, because of a story our Atherton guide, Peter, told us. When he first started doing tours, he had a family on his tour with a little girl. She was talking about pademelons (pronounced "patty melons"), and Peter had never heard of such a creature, so he said something along the lines of "Oh, I've had pademelons. They're delicious!" And the little girl looked at him like he was the devil.
K petting a wallaby.
Then we boarded the sky rail to take us back down the mountain.
We stopped again at Barron Falls, from the other side.
And got to see the train, over on the other side of the gorge.
We walked around on some more boardwalks, saw some fan palms...
And saw some of this amazing thing, the Queensland Kauri (Agathis robusta). It's so sad that the photo does not show how absolutely enormous this thing is. Height is greater than 50 meters! That's about 165 feet. Seriously. It was so big around.
The view back toward Kuranda.
And when we came over the top down toward Cairns.
No comments:
Post a Comment