Cairns 2016 Adventure Four: Onward By Rail, Homebound By Air

Vacation Down Under 2016 Quicklinks

Today’s theme – Rainforest Railways. First Stop: Freshwater Station

We had a train to catch this morning, so we got up at a ridiculous hour in order to make it out to our morning pickup. We’d settled into the routine by now – get washed up, toss back something small we’d stowed in our minifridge in order to compensate for totally blowing off breakfast, and go out to the bus stop to meet our driver. Today’s driver was super nice and we once again had the luxury of being the first on board due to our hotel’s out-of-the-way location. We chatted with him for a while, having a very intelligent conversation about east Asian countries and our experiences therein. Once he picked up others he had to begin a more generalized commentary on the area and on the destination for the day. Unfortunately the bus had cushy leather seats and the vibrations from the road made me fall fast asleep almost instantly once I was no longer individually engaged. I tried my hardest to fight it but it was too early, the bus too comfy, and I proved too weak for the challenge.

Just one of the many beautiful natural sights we sped by as we traveled up the mountain by rail.

The bus soon pulled up to the Freshwater Train Station, just outside of Cairns and very, very near to the Blazing Saddles farm we had visited the previous day. We hopped off the bus, our train tickets and daily itinerary in hand, and looked around the station for a little while. We both wanted to wake up a bit so we ordered some coffee from a little café. It was way too expensive and not good at all, which seems to be the norm for Australian coffee. I’m admittedly really snooty when it comes to coffee and Australia just wasn’t doing it for me. Korea gets it right fairly often and back home in the states it is hit and miss. Australia, however, wasn’t making me a fan. For the intent of waking us both up, however, the coffee was just fine.

Stopping for a break and some breathtaking panoramic views at Barron Falls.

We meandered about in the station and saw a cute little museum area recounting the history of the line we were about to ride and leading onto a little path which wound past the foreman’s old house – now emptied and serving as little more than a shell with some seats and a handful of posted placards with information on the place. There was some other train memorabilia and general exhibitry on the grounds, but the train was honestly more of a means to an end for me so I wasn’t terribly interested. I was into trains as a way to get from A to B, not as a point of interest in themselves. The general story was a fairly interesting one, though. The train line is now quite obviously old timey and quite dated, but in its time it was a modern marvel of engineering. Challenging the rainforest and the mountainside proved extremely difficult using the tools and methods of the day and are impressive even by our updated, modern standards. The whole purpose of the train line was to service a gold mine found in the mountain range and to provide transport for goods and workers up the mountain to the mining village. It was a gold rush time in Australia so demand was fairly high for it despite the difficulty of the route and the challenges provided. It is a completely hand-drafted, surveyed, and constructed rail system. Today it serves as a scenic thoroughfare to the village of Kuranda – a touristey hippie town nestled in the mountaintops surrounded by rainforest.

Australia’s smaller breed of croc, sunning in numbers in the Koala Gardens.

The train station itself was super old-timey. It felt like we had walked onto a station on the edge of a western saloon town. I was almost surprised to find myself not seated next to a man with a waxed moustache and a top hat. Instead, as we boarded the rustic and thoroughly wooden train car we met our actual neighbors – ironically enough a couple from just outside of the Pittsburgh area. We chatted with them and a few older ladies from California as our train made its starting ascent through the mountains. We were soon given excellent views of the surrounding countryside from outside the window. The views only got increasingly more incredible as we proceeded up the mountain. It was a little unfortunate that I was seated furthest out to the left, since most of the viewing highlights were out the right window. This included a number of gorges and waterfalls, as well as a few particularly scenic vistas that I largely had to miss because of my placement. We arrived at the first waypoint soon enough, however, and we all had the chance to get out, stretch our legs, and check out the vast chasm that constitutes the Barron Falls. The view here was particularly gorgeous. It was a churned up system of boulders with a central fall cascading from a deep basin of water at the mountain’s top. It was fed by runoff coming down from up higher and the river was even dammed further up the tracks. After a few minutes of appreciation we loaded the train back up and proceeded up the winding mountain track to the village of Kuranda.

Here’s what this kangaroo thinks of THAT.

The village itself was a small summit community which seemed entirely converted over to tourism and the sale of local goods. Once you exited the train platform there was the long train station complex and two options over a trestle bridge that overlooked the tracks. You could turn right and go down to the river where you could find a number of different scenic walking trails and hiking opportunities along the river bank as it continued to flow down the mountainside, and even a riverboat tour. Alternately you could turn left and walk up the trails that lead to the community area. We decided to spend our time in the village itself since we were on a really tight schedule this time around, so we only gave the river a token visit without going up any of the trails.

We have heard Kuranda described as “that little hippie village up the mountain” and it is a hilariously accurate take on the area. The village is full of rows and rows of shops and stalls all focused on one artisanal specialty or another. There were tons of food items, many of which I hadn’t seen elsewhere on our travels, and a surplus of varying arts and crafts. There was the usual tourist fare as well with the same unfortunate excesses in wildlife game products and taxidermy souvenirs. We chose to ignore those as much as possible in order to better enjoy the village.

Jessy and her Roo-buddy

We wandered through a ton of artist stalls right away, finding a lot of excellent paintings in all media. We also found glass blowing and other handicrafts. There were some pricier items I would have even considered getting for myself if we were considering decorating a house back home or something, but since we are in a temporary living situation in Korea and any purchases made here would have to end up being shipped back home to the USA eventually I abstained. It just layers on the cost for any items we get while we are abroad so it helps to stay our hand when making purchases. It’s a very effective financial check system, actually – as if my inherent cheapness wasn’t enough.

I prefer wallabies, I guess.

Jessy got hooked on a few stalls that sell rocks and gemstones, locally collected. They were admittedly beautiful, though my geological knowledge is sadly lacking so I didn’t know the first thing about what I was looking at. My appreciation stopped at “Ooooh Shiny!” unfortunately. I was notably more interested in our next stop, relishing the idea of rock candy far more than rocks themselves. There was a hand-made hard candy store that specialized in an absurd variety of gourmet flavors. They did tastings on the spot and they were extraordinarily flavorful by the piece. We’d also been recommended to this place by one of our horse guides earlier in our vacation. I can’t say no to candy, so we got two different variety packs which, when totaled together, equal out to a sampling of roughly 80% of their total flavor library. It was the most economical and most thorough way for us to get a taste of all they had to offer. Our pursuit of sweetness didn’t stop there, however, as we proceeded to a Honey specialty store which we had been looking forward to the entire day. Both of us love honey and it’s another thing that is bizarrely pricey in South Korea, probably again due to limitations in farmable land and places suitable for bees to gather. We checked out everything, sampling tons of extremely potent and diverse honeys from regional flowers and locations all over the Queensland Coast. We saw a ton of honey products s well – soaps, shampoos, washes, scrubs, lotions, oils, masks, balms, you name it and there was a honey-derived version of it. It’s not surprising considering the long standing documentation of the medicinal, antibacterial, moisturizing, and healing effects of nature’s magical natural sweetener/ointment. We had finally made our selections when we were sadly informed that customs regulations would prevent us from bringing raw honey or honeycomb into South Korea, so we were kind of stuck. Thoroughly crushed and disappointed (that honey was really good) I pouted a bit and decided to get a raw honey lollipop instead to smooth over my roughened up mood. It consoled me a little, admittedly, though I still wish we could have brought some of that quality liquid gold home with us.

This is one of the most terrifyingly pleased crocs I’ve ever laid eyes on. Those teeth are NOT to be messed with.

Our hunt for sweetness was not wholly in vain, as Jessy stumbled upon a shop specializing in one of my other great loves and a total rarity in South Korea – at least done correctly. She suddenly stopped in her tracks (she does this often and without warning, and I often crash into her as a result) and turned in place, calling out “Fudge!” and that made me whirl instantly, dropping all other thoughts I may have had at the moment. There was a huge store blaring bagpipe music with literally walls of the delectable confection. I ran in and checked out all the weird and exotic flavors – there were some I’d never even heard of before. We tried and tasted a ton of them (I thought of every excuse I could to get more samples) and then walked out of there with an armload of Scottish Fudge to take home and enjoy. It was a good day.

This bird actively tried to murder his keeper while he explained to us… how these birds routinely try to murder their keeper. Another Australian animal not to be messed with.

We ended up checking out some of the generic souvenir booths as well and picked up some stuff for folks back home, along with a Daintree Rainforest tea blend for ourselves to enjoy. We wanted to check out some of the mini-attractions in the area as well, starting with the Venom House. Unfortunately it was a grossly overpriced and super lame single-room exhibit with a bunch of terraria that had no real exhibitry or design to them. It just didn’t look attractive. A volunteer student of the local area was doing a talk explaining some things to others passing by but we didn’t feel the tiny room of random animals was worth the exorbitant cost they were asking. It would have amounted to about five minutes of viewing or so, so we passed on that one. We did, however, opt into the Koala Garden, which included but was by no means limited to koalas. There were most of the common Australian mammals in the collection actually and a central pool with a ton of crocs. It cost about the same as the venom house but had a lot more ground to cover, more animals to see, and a little interactive area where you could walk right in with red kangaroos, wallabies, and a handful of other small mammals that were scrounging around for the proffered food bits. We had a little bit of time to chill with the animals and get some photos in before rushing out and across the town grounds to the bus. We were short on time and had to get to our net stop – a mountaintop wildlife preserve and rainforest sanctuary called the Rainforestation.

I love large, flightless, potentially deadly birds. Especially suave ones.

When we got off the bus Jessy very nearly forgot her phone on board but we recovered it before it pulled away, lucky for us. We were given a quick run-down of how things would work and were led forward to our Aussie guide who would be taking us on a tour of the wildlife portion of the park. It amounted to a small zoo and he had a lot of interesting things to say about the animals. I spent more time chilling with the animals that were free-roaming and mingling with the people than listening in on the commentary though, as it was mostly stuff I had already heard or knew well from prior experience. I kept one ear open in case there was anything interesting to be heard, though.

I….see….youuuuu….

There were definitely some really cool highlights in this rainforestation zoo that we’d yet to see in other zoos. Sure there were the cute koalas and wombats and wallabies and such, but even though these were not necessarily common in western zoos back in the states we found them to be ubiquitous in Australian zoos. The cool thing was the Tasmanian Devil, which was a nonstop motion blur and the first one I had seen in a zoo setting. It made me understand why Taz of Looney Tunes fame got that tornado thing attributed to him. The Tasmanian Devil blazed around in tiny circles and was a constant whir as it patrolled its enclosure. Next to it was the Dingo pen, and they rested quietly while we viewed them, but the real lynchpin of the day for me was the next exhibit. There was a very long and heavily forested exhibit which housed a lone cassowary, and as we approached he let out that low, croaking bellow that only large flightless birds can pull off. He was an intense bird. Cassowaries are fiercely territorial and our guide just happened to be this particular cassowary’s dedicated keeper. This meant that he regularly infuriated this huge and powerful bird by encroaching on his territorial bounds. Every day when the enclosure was cleaned and serviced counted as a major trespass against this creature and he had a great memory and substantial grudge. It was written all over the way he was acting. He was pacing constantly behind the keeper as he walked and talked in front of us and his eyes were locked on the back of his head. On two separate occasions he crouched down and leapt up against the fence, slashing outward with his razor sharp claws and powerful, kicking legs. He was constantly in attack stance and his eyes never left the guide. One of those killer leaps was immediately in front of us, so we were positioned roughly three feet from a direct kick attack from a fully grown adult cassowary. That was a humbling and startling moment. We were completely safe on this side of the fence, however, but it was still pretty humbling to be that close to an enraged equivalent to a modern-day Velociraptor.

Koalas are adorable. The. End.

Leaving the cassowary to stew in his own bitterness we continued on to a little clearing with more wallabies and roos. Jessy and I found a little family who had a younger (not a baby, but perhaps adolescent) wallaby with them. The older wallabies all made a blockade between it and us in order to keep a safe barrier erected. It was adorable. We meant them no harm, got a few photos, and let them alone so they could go back to relaxing and grazing. No need to stress the animals more than necessary. We continued on, wandering past a collection of tumbly bumbly wombats. I decided I love these things. They are like little fuzzy steamrollers that crash their way through the underbrush and dig furiously in the dirt. I don’t know what my obsession is with stout, digging, powerful things like dwarves and wombats but I like them a lot. We saw a huge adult male saltwater croc who apparently had his own harem of females – that is, until he decided they made better meals than companions. He ate his entire entourage. Now they refer to him as “Jack the Ripper,” or just Ripper for short, due to his history and reputation. It’s fairly appropriate in my opinion.

Just look at how pleased with himself this koala looks.

The last little bit of zoo included a few random parrots, some lizards or various sorts, and an extensive koala enclosure. The koalas were the most active koalas I had ever seen. They were crawling all over the place and eating the eucalyptus supplied for them constantly. Usually mammalian enclosures feature sleepy animals who are just trying to rest and escape the heat of the day but these little guys were trucking all over their little treetops. They were adorable and some of them even had little joeys. The lecturer had some things to say about them in particular but I was trying to frantically run all over and get last minute shots of everything I could since this was our last exhibit before we had to move further on. We snapped our final photos, bid a farewell and thank you to our guide, and moved on to the next station in the day’s travels – the Army Duck Boat Rainforest Tour.

Just chilling out on the tail of this MASSIVE saltwater croc known for slaying and consuming his own wives. You know, like normal.

Now, we’ve done something similar to this before so we knew, to a degree, what to expect. The duck boat tour was first introduced to us in Singapore, when we rode a bunch of decommissioned amphibious carboats through the streets of the city and into its little bay in the middle to see the sights from the water. He asked us if we’d ever ridden in these boats before and one old guy cracked a joke about Normandy ’44. This would be similar to the Singapore tours but different in many ways. For one, we were REALLY going to see what these boats could do. We were completely off-roading this and, while there were established roads for these boats, they were very steep going up and down inclines, extremely muddy, and often dove right in and through large pools of water. We were going right into the rainforest this time, there would be no city streets involved. It was time to really demonstrate the capabilities of these craft.

Thanks to this guy we now know about a dozen new ways to die, become horribly debilitated, or fall grievously ill in the long term because of beautiful rainforest plants. Thanks, buddy!

Our guide started our tour with a few simple safety rules and some general rules of thumb regarding the rainforest; namely, don’t mess with ANYTHING because it will win in the end, guaranteed. He made a point to accenuate the dangers as well as the beauty of the raiforest and the tour was dotted with a ton of individual examples of ways the forest could ruin your day (month, year, life…) without batting an eyelash. He kept up a very strong sense of respect for the rainforest and the environment as a whole and it was a very admirably delivered sentiment that didn’t come across as preachy at all. He was a very good speaker and an engaging teacher. He was also a really funny guy. He got a huge kick out of my spider man shirt and kept using me as an example when demonstrating the potential hazards, claiming that no one here could handle the rigors of the forest “unless you’re Spider-Man.” He told me he loved the shirt as I got off the boat as well, but I could tell as much from the amount of fun he had with it during the tour.

One of the most terrifying plants we learned about in the rainforest – fancy the feeling of boiling water searing your flesh for a few months? Try using this leaf as a wet wipe. You can eat the berries, though… if you dare.

He pointed out a ton of key features of the rainforest, from simple fern growths and common basket ferns, strangler figs, and other symbiotic-parasitic flora to the more exotic and dangerous items out there to be found. There was a kind of vine which had little serrated teeth and incredible tensile strength. These snares were easily able to tear cloth or even skin and hide if it came to it before they would break themselves. He showed his brand new shirt which had been shredded after catching on the spokes of one of these dangling tendrils on a recent driveby. We also found that plant that was mentioned in the Paronella Park tour during one of the rainforest walks. This was the plant with the tiny hairs that were like poison ivy on steroids, making you feel like you were on fire for months after contact with them. He went further in his explanation, though, and mentioned a second plant that exudes a kind of waxy discharge. You could coat the exposed area and let the wax harden, pulling out some of the infectious hairs from the original plant. The side-effect of this is that the wax itself has a different brand of toxin altogether, so it was pretty much just treating a poison with a lesser poison to take the lesser of two god-awful evils of the rainforest. I was definitely impressed and my respect for the rainforest grew notably as a result of the tour. Dangerous animals don’t bother me, but plants have the most creative and ruthless ways of making your life a hell. Don’t mess with plants.

Our duckboat’s “road” through the rainforest.

The boat ride took us down a mountainside, through dense foliage, through a chunk of mountain stream and around a central basin where we could see water dragons and butterflies in the trees surrounding the waters themselves, and then back up a mountain trail through a cultivated orchard area. The guide pointed out a number of places where edible items could be found as well as a few key ways to find potable and clean drinking water in the rainforest, since most standing sources of water would result in horrible infections and illnesses almost immediately upon consumption. We didn’t spot a lot of wildlife, but what we did see was a welcome sight and the guide was really good about taking his time and letting us get a good look at everything.

Next stop, Up

We disembarked off of our duck boats and headed back to our transit buses to ride to Kuranda again, the only purpose of this stop-off was to make our way back to the SkyRail station. The SkyRail is basically one of those overhead cable car rides with glass walls – the kind that you see taking you from one end of an amusement park to the other to save yourself some walking time and afford you a great view of the surroundings. Imagine taking one of those and suspending it a few hundred meters above a rainforest’s already staggeringly tall canopy and you get an idea of what we were in for. Before getting in line we grabbed some ice cream from the mountaintop gift shop. I also picked up a souvenir coin with a cassowary on one side, proceeds of which went toward rainforest conservation.

The pools of Barron Falls, from the other side.

We were assigned to a carriage along with a Japanese family and the first part of the trip was slightly awkward. I think both of our parties didn’t want to say or do anything for fear of potentially weirding out the other party. Right out of the gate we suddenly started moing very rapidly. This may be the fastest moving cable car I’ve ever ridden on, but it had a notably long distance to travel so it made sense (we were going back down to the same place we departed from for our train ride, so it was the equivalent distance of about an hour by rail, but as the crow flies). Every time we passed over one of the support pylons the entire carriage bumped and jostled quite a bit as well. It was unnerving. Vertigo and a general sense of danger ran high. We were insanely high up in the air. The views were impeccable, though, and the sights you could see from the windows of your little glass and metal box were truly awesome. As relaxing and easy-going as a cable car ride can be, this is definitely not a ride for those who take issue with heights. If you have any fear of high places or claustrophobia, just don’t do it. Jessy has a little of the latter but is actually somewhat acrophilic, so the two must have cancelled out and it ended up being a good go.

Our way home – eyes in the sky over a gorgeous green canopy.

There were stations along the way for us to disembark and get new views of key locations along the way. The first stop was along the opposite rim of the Barron Falls that we’d seen coming up on the train. We started taking pictures of the wide and scenic vista before us when suddenly someone made a comment about the basin up on top that held the water before it fell hundreds of meters onto crashing rocks below. Apparently two local boys had scaled the mountaintop and were swimming in the crystal clear waters at the falls’ apex. We stood with our jaws dangling in amazement at these kids’ gall. We asked the guides located nearby on the boardwalk canopy area and they said while not forbidden, it’s definitely not recommended that people scale the mountain for a quick dip. We got some pictures of the daredevil divers before moving on to some other views and heading back to our car and on to the next station.

The SkyRail afforded views like this for a full 45 minutes of travel time. It was breathtaking.

We got our own cable car this time around so it was just Jessy and I. We were free to move around all we wanted in the car and get photos from every direction and out every window. I made especial use of this freedom to the point where I started to frighten Jessy. We were still suspended hundreds of meters skyward and the idea of bouncing from side to side in a cable car, causing it to move more than it already was in the notably strong winds of the day, was not exactly high on the list of Jessy’s things-that-make-her-smile. She repeatedly got me to sit down and stay still so the car would stop swaying – or at least settle to a balanced medium given the winds. I was super excited and really hard to keep down though so it must have been a struggle. The views were incredible and it was an angle of the rainforest you just didn’t get anywhere else.

More sprawling canopy views

Unfortunately the next station on the way down was very rushed. We checked our phones for the time and we had only just enough time to do a fast circuit of the boardwalk gangplanks in this area before we boarded the SkyRail for the last leg of our journey. We did so, seeing everything in a very quick, token fashion before we got back to the line for our final descent. We were paired with yet another Japanese couple but they seemed far less reticen than the previous family. The descent was steep but comfortable and we all got pictures, making way for the other group whenever we got in each others’ way. We saw some pretty noteworthy things as we went down the face of the mountain. We spotted our next destination – Fitzroy Island – a small island out of the Inlet where we would be headed the next day for some sport out on the ocean. We also spotted the previous day’s site, the Blazing Saddles ranch. We recognized the billabong and some of the familiar cane fields from the air. We didn’t see anyone wandering out there on horseback at the moment, so we were pretty convinced that they were either between tours or just keeping to that basic track on the easy side of the farm.

Cairns from above

When we got to the bottom we practically ran through the gift shop and out the doors on the far side. We were the last to arrive for our bus and were three minutes late, but no one held it against us. We got on board for one last journey back to our hotel rooms. We ended up getting some food to bring back to our room, allowing us to regroup, wash up, refresh, and record a little of our adventures for the previous days. We had to wake up super early and travel out to the marina the following day so we needed to make sure we were refreshed and ready to go first thing.