Cairns Fesitval



One vanilla, three chocolate please



Geisha Girls

Part of the Japanese contingent



A happy snail



There goes a crocodile!

A happy chappy

A favourite with half the crowd!

The octopus float

Here come the jellyfish

The start of the Chinese section

Fire breathing dragon

Long, red dragon

Drummer

Elvis leaving the building

Not sure what it was

but it made a lot of smoke!

Underwater



and on the Reef

 We have cast our votes for the forthcoming elections; now if only we didn’t have to watch election advertisements for the next fortnight!

After a very sleepless night on Friday, a massage at the local beauty parlour yesterday morning was very soothing and relaxing. Later in the afternoon, we headed into Cairns for the parade and fireworks, which were the start of the Cairns Festival. When we tried to find a parking spot, we realised that the majority of people in Cairns also wanted to watch the parade! Purely by accident, we even managed to find a vacant spot for our chairs right outside the ice cream shop. Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed most of the entries (some entries seemed to think that extremely loud music made their float better – it didn’t), with both the Japanese and Chinese communities have a large representation. The theme of the parade was Living in Paradise and the reef did feature in many entries. One beautiful float of the Great Barrier Reef was followed by a large school of jelly fish – very simple and very effective. The parade commenced at 5.30 pm and it became dark quite quickly once the sun set; unfortunately the street lights in our section managed to turn themselves off for a period of time!

As soon as the parade had finished (it took one hour 15 minutes to pass us), we, along with everyone else, grabbed our chairs and made a dash for the edge of the boardwalk overlooking Trinity Inlet. We only had to wait just over half an hour – plenty of time to eat our rolls and listen to the fruit bats in the trees behind us– before the fireworks commenced. Wow!

Sunday seems to be pack up day for a large number of caravanners, James and Maureen included; a large number are leaving tomorrow. We took the opportunity today to have a very enjoyable lunch with James and Maureen at the Trinity Beach Tavern – such a beautiful spot, sitting on the upstairs balcony looking out over the Coral Sea.