Arrival

A very long day(s) began with the flight departing from Toronto at 6:30 p.m. EST Monday and ended in Cairns on the north east coast at 3:20 p.m. local time Wednesday afternoon. That included a three hour layover in Vancouver which was actually OK as we could have a walk about and another two hours in Sydney which was merely OK.

Toronto – Vancouver 5 hours, Vancouver – Sydney 16 hours, Sydney – Cairns 3 hours, plus the layovers, plus losing a day to the international date line – whew.

However, this being a S.K.I. trip (Spend Kids Inheritance), being in business class with lie down pods certainly helped.

Going back to Economy will be tough.

We left our golf clubs in storage at the Sydney airport to avoid lugging them north given we won’t need them for a few days. Cairns is right up on the north east coast and is a different world from the giant metropolis of Sydney.

It’s got the world’s oldest rain forest next door, the Great Barrier Reef at its doorstep and sugar cane is the major agricultural crop. There are banana plantations and massive fruit farms growing huge volumes of mangoes, oranges, lemons, limes, carambola (starfruit), dragon fruit, durian, papaya, passionfruit, guava, and avocados.

Palm trees line the main streets and it truly feels like the tropics. It’s raining now and has apparently done so virtually nonstop for weeks. Annual rainfall is 6 1/2 FEET with most of it happening during the rainy season (duh) which is now (damn).

Because we are so close to the equator this part of Australia doesn’t use daylight savings time. Thus when flying due north from Sydney, it was a bit confusing to suddenly lose an hour. So in the end I think it’s midafternoon on Wednesday- oh never mind, we will sleep and eat when our bodies tell us to.

Tomorrow is the Kuranda rainforest scenic train followed by the Skytrain gondola trip. Fingers crossed the rain clouds will lift and the views look like the tourist posters.