Cairns Driveabout

Cairns is a large city in the tropics of Queensland in the far north east of Australia. We had two main objectives for travelling to Cairns; firstly to fulfil a lifetime ambition to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef and secondly to venture into the rainforest.

There is a good public bus network so we got a bus from our apartment in Trinity Beach to Palm Cove. Above is the long stretch of sandy beach at Palm Cove which is located between Cairns and Port Douglas. In the 36 degree heat the sea was warm, clear and inviting but unfortunately it wasn’t possible to swim in the sea  because it is Irukanji (Box jellyfish season (unless you have a sting suit) oh and there is a possibility of the odd crocodile….

There are some additional great places to visit in the Cairns area so we hired a car for 24 hours on one of the 6 days we were there.

Driving in Australia

We started our day by driving from our apartment for about an hour to Mareeba. Australians drive on the left and for us coming from the UK it was weird seeing kangaroo warning signs, although we didn’t see any.

While in Mareeba we visited the Coffee Works. This was an awesome place with an informative museum with literally thousands of coffee artefacts. The entrance fee also included unlimited coffee tastings of a wide range of different coffees from both Australia and the rest of the world, unlimited chocolates to sample and unlimited tastings of coffee flavoured liquors!

From Mareeba we drove for another hour or so to the Mossman Gorge which is part of the Daintree National Park. Above is Lake Mitchell and the stunning view towards Mossman.

After a tasty lunch in the Mossman Gorge centre cafe we set off to explore the Gorge.

We walked to the river and bathing area where people were swimming (photo of us (above) in front the river).

We then walked for nearly 3 km around the circular path (above) right through the rainforest which was a great experience because we were on our own almost all the way round and could just hear the sounds of the rainforest.

We stopped in Port Douglas for a drink (above) and took a picture at Rex Point (below) on the way back to Trinity Beach.