We had intended to arrive in Cairns on Sunday and begin our dive class on Monday, then head out of town when the class was over five days later. As it worked out, they don't let people with a heart murmur SCUBA dive in Queensland, and since Chad has one, we pulled out of the class by Monday afternoon. We rescheduled a three-day boat trip to start on Thursday, and suddenly we had an extra two and a half days in Cairns... and nothing to do except mope about the dive class. So, we decided to spend Wednesday on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which ran from Cairns up to the nearby mountain town of Kuranda and back again. When we went to buy tickets at the train station, we learned that we could buy a day package that included some other things we'd planned to do when we got on the road.
the Scenic Railway
So, we caught the 9:30 train out of the Cairns train station, which, incidentally, happens to be underneath the parking lot of a shopping mall. The train journey would run just under two hours through the mountainous rainforest. Construction on the track was begun in 1886, just ten years after Cairns was established as a settlement, and it was meant to provide reliable transportation to the city from the more remote towns of the tropical rainforest. Building a railway there under those conditions at that time proved to be rather difficult, though... and it took 25 years for the rail to reach the town of Herberton on the Atherton tablelands.
Along the rail route there are 15 tunnels and a number of breathtaking views down the mountain to Cairns (above left) and to the coast (above right). Although the line was originally built for transport, it certainly lived up to its current use as a scenic railway.
Midway along the route, we crossed the trestle over Stoney Creek Falls, which was only a few meters out our open windows!
All said and done, the train ride went by too quickly... and less than an hour into into the ride, our mobile phone rang with a call from D's sister. D's mother had been admitted that day to the hospital back in the US for emergency surgery, and Angela was calling to let us know. She had no details, but she was expecting a call from their father within the hour with more information. When Angela called again twenty minutes later to let us know that D's mom was out of surgery and all right, the train entered a tunnel and dropped the signal before we could hear... so we had to call her back a third time on the train. Needless to say, we were a little distracted, even with all that beautiful scenery around us.
About fifteen minutes before we reached Kuranda, the train stopped and we could get off to take a look at the mighty falls of the Barron River, up whose deep-cut gorge our train route had run. Amongst the sharp crags of rock we could sort of see some water trickling down... maybe. The cliffs were impressive, but we didn't really see all the fuss about the falls. Then we saw postcards of the mighty Barron Falls-- in the wet season! We didn't even recognize it in those pictures, with all the rocks and pools you can see in the photo to the left completely obscured by white foaming water.
From Kuranda halfway back down to Cairns, they've built a cable-car system like the ones you sometimes see at amusement parks, with little gondolas floating above everyone suspended on a cable. Only this cable car system, the SkyRail, is a 90 minute ride just over the canopy of the tropical rainforest below Kuranda. The company that runs the Scenic Railway works in cooperation with the company that runs SkyRail, so they encourage people to take on in one direction, and the other to return.
So, of course, we did-- and despite the slight nervousness on the part of those among us who are made nervous by heights, this was a highlight of the day. Our first sight was the Barron Falls from above on the other side of the gorge (left), and then up and up, we glided along above the treetops, and just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Along the way, the gondola returns to ground level twice at rainforest education centres, where you are invited to step off and go for a walk among the tress you've been studying from above.
This was our first up-close glimpse of a real tropical rainforest, although we had walked through temperate ones a few months before on our trip to the state of Victoria. There were elaborate vines everywhere we looked-- vines that looked strong enough to swing on, Tarzan-style, and vines that looked like trees in their own right. We were to learn later that the vines that looked like trees were not vines but actually trees-- strangler fig trees, to be exact. Go figure!
After the second stop, though, it was time to head down the mountain side back to the coast for the last part of our day trip before catching the bus back to Cairns. As the cable line broke through the rainforest, the suddenly clear view before us was breathtaking. Like a ski lift, the cable cars plunged down the mountainside towards the coast, and we left the untouched thick growth of the rainforest to soar over housing subdivisions and artificial waterski lakes, until we disembarked at Caravonica Terminal, next door to Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park.
The final piece of our day trip to Kuranda was entry to Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park, a tourist attraction overseen by the tribal council of the traditional owners of the rainforest around Cairns. The park was actually a decent-sized chunk of land, but because it was midweek and in the offseason, it seemed to be running on a relatively small staff. So, the group of 60 or so visitors were guided through a series of demonstrations and performances instead of roaming freely about the park.
The first performance we got to see was the dance performance, which was a demonstration of some traditional dances and some new dances inspired by traditional dances. The men also told us about the history of the Tjapukai tribes, their own stories, about personal totems, and about the kinds of dances that were traditionally taught and when they were performed.
They did invite us to take photographs and videos of the dances they were performing. If you click on the photo to the left, you can watch a short video of part of one of the dances-- it's a piece out of the middle, not the whole thing, and I include it here for people who may never get to see a demonstration in person, just to give you a sense of what it's like. As usual, you will need to have Quicktime installed and it may take a few minutes to load.
After the dance performance/demo, all of us were split into two groups for the didgeridoo demonstration and the bush medicine talk. We went to the didgeridoo demo first, where we were shown how to play, how to breathe continuously (circular breathing is one of the key tricks to playing the instrument), how they are "made," and Chad's favorite fact about didgeridoos-- the Tjapukai word for it is "yiggi yiggi."
Spears we tried first, with a carved piece of wood with a notch in the back for a spear-thrower and hay bale targets with kangaroos drawn on them. I think it's safe to say that if those had been real kangaroos and our survival dependent on hunting them, we'd be very hungry people right now.
So, off to the boomerang field we went, confident that although the spear was tough, how difficult could a boomerang be, really? It's all in the wrist, the nice man assured us... but evidently it was not really in D's wrist at all. Chad was slightly better at boomerang throwing (it is airborne at the top of this photo), but still not good enough to support us both if we had to survive in a post-apocalyptic era.
So, we trudged inside with that knowledge stored safely away in our hearts and watched a multi-media presentation/performance on Tjapukai mythology and social traditions. Evidently the peoples of the Tjapukai tribes divide into "families" that are aligned with either the "wet" or the "dry" season, and marriages must always involve one from either side... so that you can survive in both the wet and the dry.
Then,it was already 5:00pm, and time to catch the bus back to Cairns. We had a very early morning the next day to catch our boat, after all.
Just remember, kids: the throwing of spears and boomerangs can be hazardous!
Barron Falls & Kuranda
After enjoying the view, we got back on the train for the last fifteen minutes of the ride to Kuranda. Kuranda is a little rainforest city situated on the Barron River (right) above its plunge down the falls. Since the railway runs tourists from Cairns up there every day, Kuranda supports a bustling little center of shops and cafes. The guidebooks describe it as a little artists colony that is actually quite interested after 3pm when the last train leaves for Cairns, but we got to see very little of it. Not only did our packaged day trip require us to leave Kuranda on the Sky Rail only 90 minutes after we got there, but most of our 90 minutes in Kuranda was spent calling D's father in the US to get more information about her Mom's surgery, and finding something to eat for lunch.
the Sky Rail
The cable cars run over the canopy of Barron Gorge National Park, and provide a fun, accessible, and low-impact way for lots of people to experience the rainforest. The tallest tower is 40.5 meters tall, and the complete cable line runs for just under 5 miles.
Each of the 114 gondolas seats just six people, but they often let pairs or trios have a gondola to themselves. Sometimes the treetops are so close below you that it seems you could reach our and touch them... but unlike the cable car rides at amusement parks, these were closed in to prevent us from doing just that.
Tjapukai Cultural Park
Next, our group stayed put while the staff switched places, and a woman talked to us about traditional bush medicine, showing us medicinal plants native to the local rainforest.
She had examples of many of the plants she told us about, and some she passed around so that we could see and touch. We had heard quite a bit about the native Australian spice lemon myrtle--
we had even eaten it in various foods-- but we had never seen it in raw form, never smelled (like Chad in the photo here) the lemony scent that gives it its English name.
Our big outdoor activity at Tjapukai Cultural Park was the spear- and boomerang-throwing demonstrations, which were hands-on, so we got to try, too!
