Australia Week 2 Cairns and Great Barrier Reef

Cairns is in North Queensland It has the oldest rainforest in the world. It is very hot and humid (tropical) with most of the rain falling in their summer months. A lot of house are built on stilts as they are affected by flooding. Its beaches are long sandy and perfect. In some areas the rainforest runs right down to the shoreline. Some of its beaches are inhabitated by crocodiles , box jellyfish and sharks with the warmer waters. All these are highly dangerous. So many beaches are very quiet in the less populated areas and others have protected areas to swim in.

This sign is by the Daintree River Crossing north of Cairns.
It warns of the presence of Crocodiles. A couple of days prior to us travelling on the ferry a large crocodile was seen climbing out of the water with a dog in its mouth. Its thought the croc had killed the dog by drowning it and then storing it for several days under water wedging it in the rocks before bringing it up for a meal.

The Great Barrier Reef runs along the coast of Northern Queensland. It is bery beautiful and popular with tourists. We went snorkelling for the day and had a fantastic time looking for Nemo. The colours of the coralk and fish are out of this world. We also had the opportunity to go out in a submersible to explore the reef.

This is the swimming pool outside are room in one of the resorts we stayed at in the rainforest. It was very beautiful surrounded by trees , lush plants, birds and bats. The only downside was we had to share the room with much of the wildlife including lizards, insects all scuttling up and down the walls.

The engine of this train which runs tourists up to Kuranda, an old Aboriginal rainforest village is decorated with Aboriginal art. The railway runs along a track buolt in 1886 up through dense rainforest crossing many bridges and tunnels past a deep gorge.

These Wallabies live in a field close to the captain Cook highway. So named as he explored much of Australias Eastern coast.

Aborigines are the natives of Australia and own a lot of territory in Northern Queensland which includes much of the rainforest. Some of them earn their living through tourism offering guided walks, tours teaching about their culture and how to live off the land with bush tucker and how to survive and find your way in the rainforest areas. They a unique style of art and play music with digiridoos.

Australia is quite simialr to England in a lot of ways. Tea , pies , sausages, fish and chips are all popular and there are a few pubs. They have shopping centres with the Xmas decs up already, however it is much more expensive than England especially the price of food. Woolworths is alive and well in Australia but as a food supermarket!! Due to the heat school uniforms are much more informal often shorts and t-shirts like Harewood PE kit but all wear a large brimmed hat and flip flops to keep cool.