During our journey so far we have gravitated towards Big 4 Caravan Parks, due to our membership, but also due to the facilities and activities they have for the girls. We were in for a treat for our next Big 4 stay, as Cairns is home to a Big4 park that is ranked 10^th in the world. This place was off the dial! It had its own restaurant, mini-shop, water park and the world’s largest jumping pillow!

One of the things we were looking forward to in Cairns was the scenic railway and the skyrail that takes you up over the rainforest canopy. It turns out, these are both really expensive. So we gave the girls the choice – train or skyrail. They chose the train. I was really keen for this too, as I remember my Mum and Dad speaking about this railway from their honeymoon. There were some amazing sights as we wound our way up the mountain, past the Baron Gorge and up to the little village of Kuranda in the treetops.

While in Kuranda, it was time to tick off the list something I had not been looking forward to! Back when we were preparing for our journey, we sat down with the girls and showed them all our Queensland travel books. We gave them sticky notes and said they could choose 6 things (to start with) that they really wanted to see. Much to my horror, Ellysia’s first sticky note went straight on to the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, ugh! So after some window shopping along the quaint little main street, we wandered up to the Venom Zoo. The girls were thrilled to see all the snakes and spiders and other creepy crawlies. I just stayed at the back and cringed, and when the time came, said “no thanks, nice man with the pony tail, I do not want to hold that snake!”.... but of course, everyone else in the family did! Even Lily – which was a shock.

Next on the agenda in Kuranda was the Army Duck tours through the rainforest. An innovative place called Rainforestation provide brilliant tours through the dense tropical rainforest in re-purposed, open-air Army Ducks. We had a hilarious lady tour guide who was an expert at negotiating some pretty slippery, muddy hills and wrestling this antique into gear. She was an absolute wealth of information on the plants and animals in the rainforest.

While in Cairns, we took the opportunity to catch up with our friends Max and Miriam and their two adorable boys. Even though we haven’t seen these for a few years, it felt like only yesterday we’d caught up. We had a fantastic night with these guys catching up and hanging out. Miriam and I went to lunch the next day, just for girls time!

 

The lovely Max and Miriam.

The other memorable thing that happened in Cairns, was my birthday. I was treated to a night at the ‘L.E.D Restaurant’ (L-Lily, E-Ellysia, D-Daddy). I was given an impressive menu to choose from and waited on like a princess! Earlier in the day we all had a giggle with some snorkelling lessons.

Now it was time to head on to the last stop of our north-ward journey, Cooktown. We decided to take the coast road and check out Port Douglas as well. The locals had told us about this amazing stretch of road and the brochures described it as the Qld equivalent of the Great Ocean Road, but oh my goodness, it was breathtaking!