Cairns, Skyrail and Kuranda

Just north of Babinda, there is this huge rock with my name painted on it. I assume Sheralee lives on that property. It's been there for a few years now.

This is on the Esplanade at Cairns. There is no nice beach here so they have made an open swimming pool and the locals seem to make use of it. You need to visit beaches out of the city to get to the nice ones.

There are lots of eating places along the Esplanade.

This is from the balcony of our room, it was quite nice, we got to watch all the boats come in that had been out to the reef.

We took the Skyrail up to Kuranda, a tiny town which used to have a lot of hippie/alternate-life style people living there. It was well known for it's markets but today the markets are just a permanent fixture and don't have the home-made/grown produce, etc. that used to be sold. I think it's lost some of it's appeal but the trip on the Skyrail was worth it.

The skyrail stops twice on the way up and down, this was at a viewing spot and is part of the dam on the Barron River. There wasn't a lot of water flowing over so the falls weren't as spectacular as they can be.

From the Skyrail

There is a butterfly house at Kuranda and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of trouble taking any decent photos, the butterflies just didn't want to stay still. The Ulysses is the one I really wanted to photograph but those guys do not stay still for a second. They stop to lay an egg but they have their wings closed at that time and you don't get to see the beautiful colour.

This was my feeble attempt at capturing the Ulysses, they were just too fast for me.

Another view from a different motel room. This is sunset

This was sunrise. That's a fisherman trying his luck for some breakfast maybe.