On a rainy Friday morning we left New Zealand for Cairns.
We were now on holiday for four weeks, and we had two weeks left
to spend in Australia. After a five hour flight with Air New Zealand,
we arrived in Cairns. In the terminal building it was already warm,
even with the airconditioning. When we went outside, we noticed it
was really tropical Australia. Temperatures above the 30 degrees C,
and very humid. It was more then twenty years ago since I have been
in a Tropical climate, but I got used to it again in a few days.
The first days we would stay in the neighbourhood of Cairns (You pronounce it as Cains, and the local people say Cens), before driving to Sydney, where we would catch our flight back to Holland. Besides getting used to the tropical heat, we had to be more careful in the nature. As New Zealand has no dangerous animals, Australia is a total different story. First you have many dangerous snakes, the crocodiles near the rivers, and the sharks and the stingers in the sea. The stingers give most problems, as they make it dangerous to swim in the sea during the summer. 
But you can take a boat tour to the Great Barrier reef, and have
a great swim near the reef.
On our stay in Australia we didn't see any snakes or crocodiles in the nature, even when we had a boat trip on the Daintree river, too look for the crocodiles (pictures on the left and the right). 
But we want to see the crocodiles, and so we went to a crocodile
farm, where they showed us some snakes and told
us what to do when you got bitten by a snake.
(don't let someone suck
the poison out of the wound, unless you hate him very much. Reason:
a small wound in the mouth would make the poison to work very fast).
But of course we went to the crocodile farm to see the crocodiles.
They had at lot of them, both the sweeties and the salties. The salties
are the most dangerous, and despite their name, they also live in
sweet water. We were shown how dangerous these animals are, and we had
a lot of useful tips.
Our next trip was with the Kuranda railway to Kuranda. The railway leads into to the hills, with numerous tunnels and some beautiful bridges. 
As the railway climbs for 340 m
in 45 km, you have a very nice view over the plains near Cairns and the
Pacific ocean. The railway even has a hairpin. During our trainjourney
we had to pass some nice waterfalls. But there was a drought going on,
and there was not much water left in the falls, just some small streams.
This was very silly, because we were in the rain season, and we were
having the nicest weather of our trip.
And of course we visited the Great Barrier Reef. It turned out to be our nicest and most impressive visit of our holiday. Not only because of the nice warm water to swim in, but also of the nice reef and all the fish we saw. When we booked our trip, we had two options: the inner reef or the outer reef. 
We heard the outer reef was more beautiful than the inner
reef, so we booked a trip to the outer reef.
At eight o'clock our boat left the harbour of Cairns and after one and a
half hour we arrived at the outer reef. The weather was fine, in the
morning there were some distant showers, but they disappeared when we
arrived at the reef. We bought a small throw away underwater camera in
Cairns, so we could take some underwater pictures. We also had a
test dive together with a instructor, so we could go a little bit deeper
and have a better view of the reef. During our dive with the instructor,
he fed some reef sharks. It is very strange to see the sharks so close,
but after a while you get used to them.
After our stay in Cairns we went to the savannah land. We drove several hundreds of kilometres through the savannah, and camped in the Undara Vulcanic National park. In this park they have some caves, made by lava streams. In this park we also saw our first kangaroos, which were hopping over the camping. The next days we drove back to the coast and along the coast 
we drove to Sydney. We had some rainy days and some nice days.
Is was a pity, that not every day was sunny and hot,
because the beaches were very nice. In this area is was save to swim,
because it is too cold for the stingers.
On a Wednesday evening we arrived in Sydney, where we met the cousin of
our father.
He showed us Sydney the following day.
We weren't lucky with the weather in Sydney,
as it was raining almost all day. On the left is a picture of
downtown Sydney, with the clouds around the buildings.
At four o'clock we went to the airport, where we said goodbye to our
family and got on our flight back home. 22 Hours later we arrived at
Schiphol airport, where we finished our trip around the world.
During our holiday of 41 days, we "lost" one day,
we drove 10,000 km, and flew more than 40,000 km in 6 flights.
We spend more then two days in several aircraft,
and I was glad we kept flying time to a minimum by using direct
flights where possible.
My special thanks go to KLM and Air New Zealand, for their good service, fine crew and safe flights. |