Wednesday...18 August

Very busy day today. First up we booked to stay here another week. Weather is very pleasant and location is handy to everywhere. Then we went and voted at a pre-election voting place. Simple and easy and sure as hell beats standing in the absentee line for hours on Saturday.
After that we drove to Kuranda and wandered around the streets for a couple of hours looking at the various versions of markets from original markets to heritage markets to new age markets. Fascinating shops and stalls with all sorts of stuff from the usual beads and tshirts and opal stalls to a replica full size dinosaur skeleton. We viewed all this in company with our asian cousins...hundreds of them!!! Kuranda is just near Cairns and Cairns is the holiday playground for Japan. The ultimate 'whats wrong with this picture' was a sandwich board advertising the menu for a authentic German Resturant, written in Japanese!! (Yes Stephanie they had all your favourite items on that menu,)
After lunch in a nice little place selling good food and wine, we took the vintage train down the mountain from Kuranda to Cairns, a one and a half hour trip during which time you travel 36kms and go through 15 tunnels and around 96 bends and over 38 bridges over ravines. This was followed by a return trip up the mountain on the famous Skyrail above the rain forest.  Keith really enjoyed the train trip and I of course was terrified both ways.  I have been on Skyrail before and assumed it would be a nice easy trip this time. I did do ok for a while but started getting antsy half way through the 45 mins trip.The scenery was very green and being so high up the mountain you had a really good view of Cairns and the ocean around it.

Now did I tell you they have hot air balloons in Mareeba???.................