We started at the food dome where we could purchase local fare and check out the winners of this years food display competition.

Then moved on to check out some of the K9s who came in to show off fancy furcuts and prancing talent. But most of them seemed pretty bored.

As did their owners.

We sadly missed seeing Noddy, the world’s tallest horse, but there was plenty of other livestock around.

Perhaps the most alarming of these proudly displayed animals were the birds. I’m not sure when, and for what purpose, we started breeding pigeons that looked like this . . .

. . . but apparently that’ s what it takes to win a blue ribbon. The hall of birds was also particularly loud, with the constant crowing, clucking and cooing of all its feathered residents. I’m not sure what all the fuss was about, unless they were all just alarmed by each other appearances.

We also took in some wood chopping competitions, tough sport, appropriate for an Australian audience. At the end of the day I toyed with the idea of getting a show bag. Everyone usually walks away from the Royal Easter Show with at least one of these bags full of sugary food or cheap items likely to contain lead, but this sign convinced me that I need not feed the consumerist leviathan.

I’m also glad I didn’t eat here. Yes, I already know what ” a nachos” is.

To see more from Sydney’s Royal Easter show, check out the rest of my photos on flickr.

And it’s in tropical North Queensland.  Now that’s a tourist slogan if I’ve ever heard one.  Of course, in order to get to said paradise, you have to fly to Cairns (call it Cannes or no Aussie will know what you’re talking about) acclimatize to the potent humidity, fight the urge to jump right into the ocean from the beach, lest you get stung by a jellyfish or eaten by a saltwater crocodile, and then take a boat at least an hour off shore through the fame-worthy Great Barrier Reef.  But once you’ve arrived, the postcard perfect beauty melts away any wear from the journey along with any of your concerns about all the things in the ocean that might kill you.   Hey, true beauty always comes at a price.

Cairns

The trip from Sydney (made shockingly easy by the non paranoia driven security procedures and continued belief in customer service) takes you over the coastal cities and then a long stretch of lush green emptiness before you arrive at Cairns, a tiny blip of a city in the center of a tropical wonderland.  Once at our ridiculously luxurious apartment in Bellevue at Trinity Beach we found managers Jim and Doreen as helpful as could be in planning out the next four days of our trip.  And despite the shocking omission of swimmers (bathing suits) from my packing, I was able to find a swimwear shop just a block away.  Cairns is a city clearly supported by tourism as much as by its surrounding hectares of sugar cane.  We couldn’t go rushing into the deep blue coral sea just a few steps away from our hotel due to an increase in Irukandji (a nasty little jellyfish that essentially gives you the flu) but our first day in Cairns, spent drinking a Bundy and Coke on the beach and watching the distant lightening from our hotel balcony, as the tree fogs chirped and the geckos laughed, was a great way to get into the tropical rhythm.

The Reef

The next day we took an all day ocean adventure on the Ocean Freedom, a cruise company that provided a truly pleasant day supported by a staff of sun bleached young Aussies, willing able and eager to get you swimming amongst the wonders of The Reef.  Our timing for the visit was perfect.  We had arrived on a crystal clear day at the tail end of Jellyfish season, making stinger suits unnecessary (which is good considering the one I tried on had several holes in it) but still during the tourist off-season, which meant our introductory dive, normally over $150, was only $20!  So after our trip through increasingly clear waters out to the first docking point, and an easy talk through the need-to-knows of diving, it was time to don our gear, duck walk to the edge of the boat and take a leap of faith off into the water.

For me as a first time diver, this was a surreal experience.  Not only are you breathing underwater, an odd sensation in and of itself, but you’re doing it through a curtain of bubbles with a Darth Vader-esque rasp to your every breath.  I had a little trouble adjusting, probably more than I realized since my instructor had to pry my hand off the security bar in order to get me swimming.  But once you start to swim around the reef you forget all the odd sensations of diving and get lost in the odd beauty of the reef itself.  There are fish representing every color in the rainbow and every shape suitable for swimming, some in schools so large they look like curtains of glitter in the water.  There are cartoonishly large giant clams, with alien insides that seem to glow in the sunlight.  The sandy bottom is littered with bright starfish and gelatinous sea slugs, which only move when your back is turned.  We even saw a huge spotty eel, winding his way between the points of coral.  And at the base of it all, is a huge forest of bright coral in every shape nature can conjure.  I did spot a jellyfish or two, but luckily they were harmless kind.  Gabe spotted a reef shark, which I was glad I didn’t see.

The dive was only a part of our adventures for the day.  We also snorkeled, an easy way to see just as many wonders as you can during a dive, took a glass bottom boat tour with an informative guide who confirmed my belief that every form of life in the ocean is just plain weird, and we took a trip out to Uplou Cay.  This little sand island, surrounded by nothing but bright blue reef waters, is officially the coolest place I have ever been.  The sand was as soft as sand can get before turning into vapor, the water, just lapping at the edge of the island, was clear for miles around and almost the same temperature as the air.  I would have been very happy to set up a hut in the middle of this tiny cay and content to share it with the flock of migrating terns running along the shoreline.  Alas, we had to return to the boat.  It seems tour companies have given up the habit of leaving people behind.  At least while we were on the trip back I could be grateful that I wasn’t among the tourists now bearing brightly sunburnt backs.

Daintree

The next day a long drive through a lot of sugar cane, and a car ferry across the most certainly croc infested Daintree river, got us to Daintree National Park, a stretch of rainforest surrounding the famous cape tribulation.  The time you spend in your comfortably air conditioned car, winding through the dense green tree cover, past all the signs warning of possible cassowary crossings (although we didn’t see any) and occasionally sighting a bright blue Ulysses Butterfly, leaves you ill prepared for the conditions you step out into.  To experience the humidity in Daintree is to experience what it must be like to hike through soup.  Even with a palpable layer of bug spray on, you’ll be quickly surrounded by a gang of mosquitoes.  And they were a minor concern compared to the acid spraying Green Ants, or the possibility of running into a Golden Orb Weaving Spider, a harmless but enormous bug.  I thought the spiders in Sydney were large until I saw these sombrero sized monsters.  Gah!

But the beauty of the rainforest quickly removes your concerns about its insect residents.  And though I could never live next to a beach you couldn’t use most of the year, jellyfish (stinger) infested waters make for a pristine coastline.  Instead of being inhabited by tourists the beach is a playground for sand crabs, whose little marble-like piles of sand remain undisturbed.   And even with a storm rolling in and booming it’s thunder across the mountains, Daintree was a truly magical place to visit.  Between the afternoon downpours, we managed to make one last stop at the Daintree Ice Cream factory for a little blueberry, banana, soursop and wattleseed ice cream.  I don’t know what the last two are either, but they were delicious.

Kuranda Railway

For our last day in Cairns we decided to let the tourist industry chaperon us around, by taking the Kuranda Scenic Railway and Sky Rail.  You start the journey at a historic train station with a small museum dedicated to the making of the railway during the areas gold rush.  A quick read about the difficulties they experienced while constructing it, makes you wonder why anyone ever wanted to build a railway in the first place.  Nonetheless, I’m glad it was there for us to take.  The journey winds up the mountains offering stunning view downs into the lush green valley and past some amazing waterfalls churning out iced coffee colored water.  The trip ends at Kuranda, an artsy little mountain town that somehow manages to remain quiet as can be, even with trainloads of tourists getting off at half hour intervals.  I wonder if that was a consequence of it being the “off season” or if such places simply encourage a hush in their visitors.

To get back to the base of the mountain we took the Skyrail, a series of sky buckets like the kind you might find in a zoo, but which soar you over the lush canopy of rainforest, and offer two view points to stop along the way and take a quick tour through the trees.  We may have gotten stuck at the second view point when some lightening forced them to stop the buckets for a while (lightening + steel cable = bad combination) but our holdover gave us some extra time to appreciate our surroundings.  And an informative ranger took the time to teach us why Cassowaries have bony helmets on their heads (scientists suspect it’s to pick up on low frequency noise) and that most of the fruits in the rainforest can kill you.  Yet somehow the aborigines in the area figured out how to cook and eat them anyway.  Who did they get to test those recipes?

There’s always room for Magic

Eventually we made it down the mountain, which included another beautiful view on the way, and were left to seek entertainment for our last night in Cairns.  We decided to hit up the one show that had its brochures stuffed into boxes in every tourist office, Extreme Illusions.  Our tickets included dinner in the Cairns casino, another surprisingly sleepy place.  Once again, I wondered if it was a consequence of the off season.  But the show attracted a decent audience, probably because of all those brochures.  Magician Sam Powers is a cute Aussie, whose 90′s era flame covered poster doesn’t do him justice.  He puts on a fun show full of classic illusions complete with a scantily clad assistant.  Very entertaining.  If he ever makes his way back to Sydney, I’ll happily be his volunteer from the audience.

The next leg of our journey took us from the Tropical North to the Red Center, a place vastly different from Cairns in more than just complimentary colors.  Stay tuned for Part II of the journey in my next entry.  Till then, just sit back and enjoy the view.

But do try to stay out of the water, for your own good.