4 August 2011 - Cairns Sunland Leisure Park

The day was indeed awesome, so much so that I did not find time to update this “diary” until today.

After breakfast I sent Chris up to the office to collect an iron for me; our own having performed abysmally the previous day and ended up where all $9.95 appliances end up before their more expensive relatives; in the rubbish. While ironing, I got thinking, as one always does with ironing, that it would make our time here in Cairns less pressured if we were to extend beyond the booked week. It took little to convince Chris of the same and so when I returned the iron to the office, I was able to book a couple more days and more importantly in the same spot. Moving mid-term within the same camp is such a pain!

There was also some excellent news, particularly good given our experience of things not turning up. The water filters ordered on Monday, just one day before, had arrived. But… and of course there is always a but, they have only lives of 750 litres each, whereas the one that Chris took out had a life of 2,840 litres. He had gone to great pains to give the serial and model numbers of the old one and had explained the situation, and yet we have been sold “a melon” (Chris’s term) by the company. Prompt service but simply not meeting the needs of the customer.

Lake Morris

I had planned our day trip, not sure whether we would be able to fit the itinerary into the one day, bearing in mind that we needed to be back in time to go out for The Big Night Out. Our first destination was Lake Morris or rather the Copperlode Dam, high in the Lamb Ranges immediately behind and west of Cairns, the major water source for the city. To get there we drove through lush dense rainforest along a winding narrow but sealed road which ran along the incredibly steep side of the escarpment. Stopping from time to time at designated view points, we did indeed have spectacular views down over the city. Once at the top, the road cut inland and across to the dam and spillway, and a small but pretty picnic area.

Here at Lake Morris, the annual rainfall averages 2,604 mm, 60% of it falling during the months of December through to March. The rainfall here is 30% greater than that at Cairns, just 12 kilometres away and is a little more than half that at Babinda.

It was still fairly early so we stayed only long enough to enjoy the scene and of course take the inevitable fifty photos before heading back on the same route.

Lake Placid

Our next destination was Lake Placid, a very intimate lake that is really just a flood bulge of the Barron River. Despite the "Achtung - Crocodile" signs, we lunched at a bench less than a metre from the water’s edge and saw nothing but ducks bobbing about on the rippling waters. Again there was little to hold us beyond that which Lake Morris had offered, and so we then drove up the Barron Gorge to the hydro power station, crossing the river by bridge to an excellent information centre where we watched a couple of equally excellent short films. The Surprise Creek falls a spectacular 243 metres immediately downstream from the bridge, and that together with the Barron River, despite the fact that much of its volume is being diverted through a large penstock, were very picturesque.

This took us to the end of my planned destinations, but it was still early in the afternoon, so we called up to the Crystal Cascades at Redlynch on our way home, having seen the brown attraction sign as we had passed. These are a series of waterfalls along the Freshwater Creek, the same that is dammed high in the mountain above for the city’s water supply, forming delightful shaded swimming holes along the lower reaches, and more further up which are deemed to be too treacherous for swimming. The walk of two and a half kilometres was quite delightful, through the bush alongside the river, where there also grow stinger trees, of which one was frequently alerted to the dangers. We did not stray from the wide path fearing that one of these green monsters might leap out and do damage. One need only read Bill Bryson’s travelogue of Australia to realise we have barely touched on the dangers of moving about this country, but then I am sure I have mentioned this before.

It seems to almost demean these lovely spots by reporting that we had “done” them all in one day in such a short space of time. That is not so, we simply went with little information regarding distances and expectations, all in keeping with the sub-standard Visitors Information here in Cairns. Again this statement is misleading, because if you want to go out fishing, or dining, or staying on some resort, where they can take big dollars from you, there are no lack of information and agencies willing to assist. I suggest that to see Cairns the way we prefer to travel, is best done with a Rough Guide in hand, something we have felt unnecessary to this point.

By five o’clock we had read the newspaper and were dressed and on the road again into the city for our night out. We parked fairly centrally and wandered around and around several blocks in search of inspiration or a licensed Thai restaurant, finally settling for the old Courthouse Hotel with its expansive courtyard just full of mainly youthful tourists enjoying a beer in the last of the afternoon heat. We were coerced by a pretty young girl at the entrance handing out leaflets advertising the specials for the day, and saw that Tuesdays offered a special deal on pizzas. And so it was that we soon found ourselves sitting on the terrace of this wonderful old building eating delicious pizzas washed down with a rare glass of wine. We followed that with our favorite desert around the corner at the Scottish Restaurant, and were back at the Civic Centre in plenty of time to find a seat in the foyer and engage in conversation with a lovely local couple.

As we had walked back to the cruiser, dark had fallen and the sky was alive with fruit bats, squealing and wheeling overhead. It was wonderful, but sad to think that they are becoming more and more a vilified species as further domestic animals are being put down with the hendra virus, and their human carers on the observation lists.

La Traviata is one of our favourite operas, indeed I would say my own favourite, and so we know the synopsis and the music backward. So often we bypass a production because we have seen it before, and so we could have easily dismissed this in the same manner. I am so glad we did not. How we enjoyed this wonderful production. Oz Opera is part of Opera Australia which takes productions, obviously downsized for travel convenience, to the regional cities. While the cast was decidedly smaller than when we saw it in Auckland, they did themselves proud. It was just fabulous!

And so we returned to camp in the dark which is so unusual for us who are unusually tucked inside our little home by nightfall, or even early afternoon. It had indeed been the awesome day anticipated the day before.

We slept in this morning, not because of our late night, but because rain has that lullaby effect and it had rained and rained, and still continued to do so from time to time after we rose.

I checked the forecast for the next few days and it looked as if today might be the last inclement day, so the planned tikki tours are on hold until at least tomorrow.

Instead the day has been spent doing more of what we are so good at: shopping! More things for the planned expedition from BCF, Super Cheap Auto, Bunnings and other bits and bobs that one just cannot be without. The water filter suppliers rang from Sydney in response to our feedback email and have promised a free replacement if one filter does not last six months. So having previously named and shamed the company, I have edited this blog to remove their name from any resulting unwarranted bad mouthing.

As I complete the days account, there are kookaburras in the trees close by laughing with gurgling hilarity, a sound that still thrills me after all this time. Fellow campers just carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary is taking place which makes the concert all the more bizarre. How I love the wildlife in this amazing country!