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.
Fishy says bye!
2 comments:
i've done this trip! i was only 15. cairns kind of annoyed/disappointed me too.
Yeah Cairns is pretty much tin shed central. It looks like the whole place is permanently about to be knocked down. The only proper buildings I could see was the gallery and the Dior shop! Can't sell Dior out of a tin shed.
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