The one last thing we did in Cairns on day 1, before we drove to Port Douglas was to go to the tourist information office and book ourselves onto the Big Cat tour to Green Island for the Friday, as we wanted to be able to see the Great Barrier Reef close up and Green Island seemed like a good place to do that from.
It was a good tour for us as well since a lot of the Reef tours are for diving and snorkelling only - bad for us as my mother and I cannot engage in underwater activities because of our silly ears - whereas on the Green Island tour you get to spend time on the island itself and have the option of a glass-bottomed boat tour if you do not want to do snorkelling. The Big Cat tour cost $73 each for the full day and included in the price was either glass-bottom boat trip or snorkel equipment hire.
Since we were staying in Port Douglas (60km north of Cairns) and the we had to be in Cairns at 8am to be registered and board the boat, the day required rather an early start! We all rolled out of bed at 5am and were in the car at 6am, quite an achievement really! The road at this time was pretty clear, and we had an amazing view of the sunrise on the coastal part of the road, off Ellis Beach. I also had my query answered over "does it EVER get cold in tropical north queensland?" the answer is NO, not really, although you do need a cardigan on at 5am in winter.
We arrived into Cairns and put the car in the carpark by about 7.15am, so decided to go for breakfast at Perotto's, the cafe at the gallery we had visited on day 1.
Toast and coffee later, we were ready to head to the boat...place. Sorry, the word for where you get on a boat has completely escaped me. But in any case we queued up and got out tickets, then boarded the catamaran. It was a nice big shiny boat! The three snorkellers (Bec, Pere and Mark) collected their snorkel stuff and we were off!
Leaving Cairns behind....it looks like such a teensy uneventful place compare to the views of Sydney from the water.
Beautiful, rainforest-coated coastline.
After around an hour, Green Island loomed in the distance!! The island is a coral cay (small, flat, sandy island formed on the surface of a coral reef) and is about 17 miles off the queensland coast.
First view of the island! Just after I'd stepped off the boat onto the long jetty.
Coral reef! The water is so clear, you can just see all this coral just beneath the surface for miles around. I'd never seen anything like it in my life, it was incredible.
It was about 10.15am when we arrived. Lep and I were to go on the glass-bottomed boat at 11.45, so we sat on the beach for a bit while the snorkellers prepared!
Very fetching!
The island has two beaches, one on each side of the jetty. The snorkelling action seemed mostly centred on this one.
You can see our boat in the distance at the end of the jetty.
At 11.30, Lep and I set off down the jetty for our glass-bottomed boat. I wasn't expecting to see too much (I was mostly grumpy at my inability to go snorkel) but it was actually amazing! The took us out to the deeper parts of the water and there were some HUGE fish, and so brightly coloured. It was also good because the guide on the boat gave you loads of information about what you were looking at, and we learnt lots of interesting things, such as that the Nemo clownfish (who is meant to be a boy child) in Finding Nemo is innacurate because only adult females are orange and white. Males are grey, and there are no young female clownfish, they are all born male and some turn into females as they mature.
Most of my photos weren't very good, but here is one to give an idea.
After the boat we ate some chips on the island, and I went for a dip in the sea.
At 3.45pm it was unfortunately time to head back to the boat for the trip back into Cairns, so we waved bye bye to Green Island.
The boat ride back was fun, the more ice-cream-orientated of our party (Mark and Bec) had ice creams on the boat and we watched out for humpback whales (some had been sighted that morning in the area, apparently), although didn't see any.
We made it back to Cairns at 5pm and then did the drive back along the coastal road, watching the sunset this time. Sunrise and sunset in one day.
Mark and Pere hired an underwater camera, and they also had a waterproof case for one of our compact cameras, so there are quite a few underwatery photos. I'll put those up somewhere when I get hold of them and will notify here. As usual there are tons more photos from the day at Flickr, click the Green Island set on the right hand side of the page.
On the Thursday, we decided to have a quiet day and enjoyed the sun on Port Douglas' 'Four Mile Beach'! Lots of sunbathing and swimming in the wonderful warm sea. Then home for the evening for some pasta and wine in the apartment.
Here are some photos of the apartment (Nautilus apartments, Port Douglas - HIGHLY recommend them)
Open plan living/dining area.
Balcony - ripening my avocados out there.
View from my and Mark's bedroom window! Palms and ferns. This was also the same view from the bathroom window - having a shower next to the open window was like showering in a rainforest - bliss!
I shall have to blog events in sections as otherwise the overload of information and photos is likely to make you/me/the blog explode. Here is part 1. I'll also add the photos (and as usual some ADDITIONAL BONUS PHOTOS!) to FLICKR as I go along, so you can view them there also in improved size and quality (how photobucket and blogspot manage make photos look so awful and washed out I shall never understand).
Day 1: Cairns - Ellis Beach - Port Douglas
We flew to Cairns in the afternoon of Tuesday 11th August, arrived at the airport, picked up our hired car for the week and drove off to our hotel (fairly basic but clean and comfortable enough for one night), before immediately walking into the city centre for a pizza and wine and cocktails (for Mark, anyway) at Rattle and Hum bar. It was SO warm! Even late in the evening, we sat out on the restaurant terrace in our summer clothes, delightful. After enjoying the balmy evening air, we headed back to bed.
On Wednesday 12th we got to look at the city properly. It's an odd place, Cairns. It has no beach but its shoreline is all mudflats. The road along the front is called the Esplanade, so we wandered along there to see what was afoot. Saw some big pelicans, which was quite good.
Looks like sand but it's just sandy mud.
Saltwater crocodiles are a big danger of the tropical north Queensland area. Signs regularly warn you of their presence in watery areas.
We went and had a lovely breakfast in a lovely cafe, then had a look at the city. To be honest, there is not a lot to see. Cairns is tiny and unimpressive, and all the buildings look like prefabs to me. It certainly doesn't have the looks of Sydney and Melbourne, anyway. But nevermind, we were not to be there long. After a couple of hours, we hopped in the car and whizzed off up the coast towards Port Douglas, our home for the week.
The coastal road suddenly opened out with views over this amazing beach. Ellis Beach is the northernmost of Cairn's Northern Beaches, and since it has no resort and no public transport access, it is nearly deserted. So we stopped off for a bit.
The sea was amazingly warm - like a bath that's semi-cooled but still just warm enough.
Everyone was quite excited!!
Double Island, as seen from the beach.
Our transport for the week. It was well comfy! And huge. Pere had fun learning to drive an automatic too, haha.
We then continued the remainder of the journey to Port Douglas, upon which I shall write in the very near future.....
My parents and Bec arrive upon the morrow, after they have finished marauding through Singapore. I thusly really ought to be cleaning the house and getting all organized for their arrival. I kept telling myself 'I won't leave everything til the last minute' all week, but still found myself bumbling around IKEA at 5pm this afternoon faffing over buying a new pillow I should have gone to buy about six months ago. Last Friday I went to a party in the apartment block above the Coke sign in King's Cross, which was a novelty! It was a philosopher friend of Mark's who is from USA and is just visiting Sydney to work there for a month. Went to see The Flaming Lips on Tuesday night at Hordern Pavillion. Best gig EVER! Came out feeling so revitalised and joyful, they let tons of balloons out into the crowd to play with, Do You Realise?? sounded so good!!
Went to Ice and Slice in Newtown with Katherine on Thursday for some good old pizza (slice) and gelato (ice). I also managed to impressively get home from Newtown to Meadowbank in just 45 minutes. Mark didn't believe me, but you can just do it if you pay attention and time the stupidly infrequent trains right! Friday night I was planning to be good and come home to tidy but ended up in the pub with Becky, Richeal, Cian and Karl. Foolish. And while I was podging up on beer and potato wedges Mark was in the gym so I felt doubly guilty and must try to live a healthier life. Friday was also my last day of work - I have 4 and a half weeks off!!!! SPRING BREAK!!!
And now I am here on the blog and STILL not sorting the house out ! :(
I never wrote about Melbourne properly...
I arrived on the Thursday, on a surprisingly on-time Jetstar flight to Avalon and caught the bus into Melbourne, arriving at Southern Cross station. From there, I walked all the way up to the university, trundling my case, because I did not understand how to buy a tram ticket at that stage. This later turned out to be a good thing because it gave me a good idea of where stuff was, while most of the people who had been around for the conference for over a week already didn't have a clue! Once there, we went to the last conference talk of the day which was Matt Kennedy (one of Mark's old Nottingham colleagues) and then went for some drinks in a pub with a few people in tow. Then pizza, then we decided to investigate some bars, the first being the rooftop bar at Cookie! It was so good! We went back again on our last night to say goodbye, which is when these photos were taken.
It was very busy and had heaters and amazing views and was playing some awesome Boards of Canada-type electronica out of speakers on a post which suited the view so well. Would be great in summer! After that we went to a cocktail bar which may or may not have been called Double Happiness. It was so good in there, with a proper cocktail waiter who could make you custom cocktails if you just told him what you wanted it to taste like. It also had an open fire which was so nice to get all cosy by. Quite a few people from the conference ended up joining us so it was very jolly. Ended up spending a shocking amount of money but hey ho, and walked back to the uni (we were staying in a college room there) to discover oh dear it was 4.30am.
BUT still four hours later we were up again for Kit Fine's talk at 9am on Friday morning. I have no idea what it was about but it was nice to see. I drank a lot of coke and then we headed back to bed for a bit. Mark then went off to the conference farewell lunch and I dozed some more in the room before meeting him on Brunswick Street for juice, then getting the tram to Greg Restall's house to which we had been invited for dinner, which was lovely.
On Saturday we had a big scrambled egg brunch and a gallon of coffee followed by a look round the shops, including this amazing stationary shop that I am going to order a ton of stuff from (we couldn't buy stuff there as we couldn't get it home on the plane!).
In the evening we went to the Vegie Bar and had a vegie roast! With a really nice bottle of some wine called 'Tempranillo', which I'd not heard of but is a spanish grape or something. Mark made me put my fangs in to laugh at me.
Then we went to a bar called the Carlton where there were all these big taxidermy animals (giraffe and ostrich etc) for some gin, then back to the rooftop bar for more more more wine!
We love the tram! Mark also managed to maintain his new quiff all week, which is quite impressive because normally when he gets quiffed he lets it drop after about 2 days.
On Sunday we had most of the day until our flights so we went to the Dali exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. It was an amazing exhibition, they had so much stuff there, including full length screenings of Un chien andalou. It was also really well laid out and the little information bits were written really well, obviously curated by Dali experts rather than just general curators who sometimes seem to miss the point of everything. It is also nice to see some big name art in Australia, because it does seem like they miss out a little in general, although that's perhaps just my European perspective.
Then after some food we headed for our planes, Mark to Tullamarine and me back to Avalon, but fortunately our flights arrived at Sydney at the same time at the other end at about 10pm Sunday night and we pootled off home to bed.
I want to go back to Melbourne :( But I must stop procrastinating and TIDY UP. I have the sorest throat in the world, I can barely swallow and it's been like that for two days. I must also therefore get healthy. The cricket also appears to have been rained off, I wonder if there will be any at all today.
I am Anna. I am 30. In 2008 I moved from the UK to Sydney, Australia. After almost 3 years enjoying good coffee, good wine, good sushi and a whole lot of sun, I moved back again. This is a blog about my life. Get comfortable.
