3rd day in Cairns, 7th in Australia! Tjapukai, Scenic Skyrail, Koala Gardens, and BirdWorld! Got picked up from Cairns Central and headed to the Skyrail Station.
First stop, Tjapukai Cultural Park. Started off with a cultural background video which was pretty… sad but unfortunately true. European man comes and takes over and massacres most of the aboriginal people and destroys their culture only to be revived from survivors many many many years later. Sounds familiar hmm? After all that there was a small performance about their creation story with video effects projected onto a mirror with performers who timed their movements to it. Nicely done i’d say, its too bad there were only 6 of us in the audience…
Moving on……. went over to a didgeredoo (sp 0.o) performance with a dance about some animals and stuff. followed by a didgeredoo demo and tutorial, which doesn’t sound too hard but is actually a bit difficult 😛 Followed by a short segment on medicinal herbs and fruits that were native to the area that the Tjapukai people used. Yup. sounds awesome…
After the educational part, spears and boomerangs! Apparently aboriginal people used spear throwers, an arm’s-length stick with a hook at the end that held the spears in place. holding the throwing stick and the spear, it was used to launch the spear with more power than just your arm. Rosanna launched it past the targets… it was pretty fun but there were more people this time and not enough spears to go around.
Boomerangs! although we only really got one chance at throwing them, it was also pretty cool. Taught how to throw it and mine almost came back to me… but hit the enclosure people were in instead. oops. Rosanna bought her own plain boomerang that she can throw around, i got a souvenir one to keep safe…
Next up, Skyrail to Kuranda Village! Due to timing we just kept going up the rail instead of stopping at the towers, so it took about 35-40 minutes to get to the village from the bottom.
Walking through the village, it was full of arts and craft shops and numerous souvenirs shops, it seems a lot of small town/villages live off tourism. Northern Cairns seems all residential and pretty quiet besides for a passing car or two, of course, on a weekend… Making our way through and finding some small interesting souvenirs we stopped for lunch. Crocodile Pie! According to Rosanna, the taste was similar to chicken but the texture similar to fish. makes sense. not bad not bad.
However, the point of coming up here, Koala Gardens! Housing some crocodiles, turtles, lizards, snakes, frogs, and – koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons! The koalas were just in their small enclosures hanging out on the trees, no glass or anything, we could have just reached over and poked them 😉 Best of all, there’s a kangaroo/wallaby/pademelon pit where we were allowed to grab some feed and go down to feed them! Pretty cool, hold out your hand and they all come-a-running. The kangaroos push away the wallabies though, and the pademelon’s were hiding under the ramp so we couldn’t get to them… ohwell.
Since that took a lot quicker than we anticipated, and after a little convincing, we went to birdworld kuranda! An open aviary with so many birds. They were just flying and pooping everywhere. The visitors who bought some bird food pretty much got attacked by parrots and other birds, landing on their head, arms, shoulders, funfunfun! The rarest bird here was the Cassowary, which is apparently endangered? yes, birds are awesome. for some reason a green parrot flew onto my back a couple times and started to bite at my buttons. Rosanna was lucky too, a white bird landed on her head twice, for no apparent reason. hahaha… We were just happy that we didn’t get pooped on. Lotsa pictures!
Once we left most of the shops were closing or already closed, so we headed straight to the skyrail to go back down and stop at the towers.
Our first stop on the Skyrail was the Barron Falls, walking through the Rainforest and beautiful views. Followed by the second stop, Red Peak, the highest point on the Skyrail, again nice views and walk through the rainforest. and of course, huge spiders!
After getting back to the city, we realized that there wasn’t much else to see or do. The Blues Festival by the harbour was 75 dollar entry, so….. pass. Tomorrow, we’re shopping and chilling. Leaving for Melbourne on Monday! 5 hour-ish flight from Cairns…
Spider!
Koala!
Kangaroo!
Indian Ringneck Parakeet!
Indian White Ringneck Parakeet!
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