Kuranda

The day after boxing day, we visited the town of Kuranda, in the mountainous rainforest near Cairns.

Our journey to Kuranda was via the Kuranda Scenic Railway. We were told that the railway was originally built in response to a gold rush in the area. Nowadays, its primary purpose seems to be to ferry tourists to Kuranda and it's easy to see why, given the great views that we saw on the way up.

Half way up, we stopped at a station where we got some great views of the Barron Falls.

The construction of the railway line took a massive amount of time and effort. Massive amounts of rock had to be removed from the mountainside. In this picture, you can see some of the solid rock from the mountainside that was left behind as a monument. The side of the mountain is actually to the left of the train in the picture; the monolith that you see is all that remains after a cutting for the railway line was cut from the rock.

The town itself wasn't much, really. There were a ridiculous number of shops selling souvenirs and quite a few cafes and restaurants. We ended up eating in a great place called German Tucker, where we dined on German sausages, saurkraut and German beer. The sausages and beer were great, although the saurkraut wasn't to my liking. While there, we noticed that most of the other customers were Japanese. I guess Japanese people really like German food. A few days later, we went to a Japanese restaurant in Sydney and there was a German guy there so I guess the love is mutual.

We went down the mountain on the Skyrail cable car. This was, in many ways, even more spectacular than the train. From the cable car, we could see the valley that our train had climbed up earlier in the day.

We stopped in a few places on the way down. From our first stop, we were able to view the Barron Falls from the other side.

We went for a quick walk in the rainforest.

On the final part of the descent, we could see the city of Cairns in the distance:

Unfortunately, the rapid descent played havoc with my ear (the other one!), leaving me in a lot of pain and forcing us to cancel the snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef the next day. Still, Kuranda was lots of fun and the views that we saw were truly great.