Barron River

Thursday, 16 August 2012

Monday night’s entertainment turned out to be rather enjoyable – the performer was Col Baigent, a member of The Aztecs (Billy Thorpe obviously had a previous engagement). He obviously realised the age of his audience, didn’t turn him amplifiers up too loud, knew when to finish and could actually sing (none of which applied to the previous entertainer!). He is returning tonight for a repeat performance.

Tuesday morning, Cat said a fond farewell to London Bear when his owners left for Port Douglas and Ayers Rock. Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly quiet days – just the usual day to day activities, with bowls on Tuesday evening. We even had some rain on Wednesday but fortunately the temperature didn’t drop. We also had a small (well, quite large really) visitor to the awning late in the afternoon.

Today we headed back to Kuranda in search of the Barron River Boat Cruises. Evidently they have been operating for 27 years but we only learnt about them this week! The boat was very easy to find, being right next to the station. The 45 minutes cruise was just great – the owner/operator had a wonderfully dry sense of humour. We travelled down (or should that be up?) the river as far as the dam, with stops to feed the fish and turtles (with the black ducks doing their best to muscle in), look at the bird life and actually spot two crocodiles – one was sitting on a log and the other swimming along in front of the boat.

While it may have only been about 50 steps down to the river, someone put in extra for us to climb on the way back – at least another 500! We decided to have lunch in the tearooms at the station, which gave Cat the chance for a photo opportunity on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.

The Cairns Festival commenced today and runs for the next fortnight. As part of the festival, artworks are displayed along the Esplanade – known as Esplanart, of course. There were some really interesting and funky works, such as the Reef Circus, Dog Walk, Endangered Circus Performs, Salt Water Immigrants, Cans … Cairns, etc. Our favourite was probably the cans.

It was also nice to see that the spoonbills have now returned to keep the pelicans company in the foreshore mud, although someone seemed to be too busy watching a different species of bird near the lagoon to notice!