Day 37: 20231030 Monday October 30, 2023- Cairns
As the sun rose, we spotted a few small islands out our balcony. The ship didn’t actually arrive in Cairns (pronounced Caans) until 8am, but the waterfront and city certainly appeared more inviting and modern than the industrial area where the Brisbane cruise ship terminal is located. Cairns has a well developed tourist oriented waterfront and the cruise ship terminal is in easy walking distance to it.
There are rows of hotels and condominiums with restaurants, pubs, bars and shops on the ground floor creating a mall of sorts along the water front. There is also a large public waterpark and many picnic areas along the board walk. There is also a marina that is home to many of the large catamarans that do snorkeling and diving excursions to the Great Barrier Reef. It is all very modern and clean.
Our excursion took us 40 minutes north of Cairns along the coast to Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures. This part of Australia isn’t particularly known for crocodiles, but what had started out as a roadside tea house, became a tourist destination after the proprietor acquired a crocodile that he showed to visitors in a pond he created behind the tea house. Then as crocodile hunting became more popular, the population came under threat of depletion, so Australia allowed breeding and farming of crocodiles for meat and leather. Hartley’s now has about 3500 crocodiles in their facility which includes a tourist zoo and commercial crocodile farm.
The drive took us past sugar cane fields, some of which were being harvested by unusually tractors which had their front axles removed and were grafted onto harvesters that cut and transfer the cane into train cars. Prior to construction of an international airport which allowed an explosion of tourism business, sugar cane plantations were the backbone of the local economy. Now it is dwarfed by tourism.
A little further north, the road follows the coastline, which has several stretches of honey colored sandy beaches. There was one short stretch of rocky beach where people have been habitually stacking stone into cairns so either ironically, or appropriately, these are cairns in Cairns.
The bus also passed by a bush fire that appeared to have started on the shoulder and was spreading up the hillside. We could feel the heat through the bus windows even as the bus sped past at 80kmph. The guide wasn’t too alarmed because she believed there was some controlled burning going on to lessen the risk of bigger bush fires later into the fire season. However, we certainly didn’t see any evidence of supervision or control.
We weren’t really sure what to expect of this Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures but it turned out be be a nice excursion. The zoo has a limited number of animals besides some really huge crocodiles, but they had some koalas on display and one was very active- even jumping from one branch to another in the demonstration area. We got to pet the koala and found that koalas don’t have very soft or smooth fur. But they are cute none the less. People can pay $30 for a photograph where they get to hold the koala, and the koalas seem to put up with it.
The zoo was much smaller than even the Featherdale Wildlife Park, but that was OK since we only had a couple of hours to visit. It was possible to see all the animals in the 3 hours and also see the Koala demonstration, a snake demonstration, and take a boat ride through their crocodile lagoon. The boat ride had the feeling of the Disney Jungle Boat ride, but without the animatronic hippos or monkeys. They did try to coax a few crocodiles into feeding with chicken heads tied to the end of a pole. There wasn’t a whole lot of action, but he did manage to get a couple of crocodiles to snap at the chicken heads out of the water.
They did have wombats but it was hot enough that they were camped out inside a hollow log and dog house structure. They had a variety of kangaroos and wallabies but no quokka. We did learn a couple of new animal trivia facts. One is that it is the male cassowary that incubates the eggs and looks after the chicks.
We also learned that snake bite survival in Australia is extremely high. They figured out that most Australian venomous snakes have very small fangs that only puncture a few millimeters to inject the venom into the subcutaneous space. This is where lymph carries the venom to lymph nodes and ducts before it can enter the blood. So instead of cutting the skin and sucking out venom, the best first aid is to simply wrap the entire effected limb with elastic bandage to restrict the lymph, and then get to the nearest hospital. In most cases, they find the risk benefit ratio of administration of antivenom is marginal, so half the time, they end up just observing the victim’s response as they unwrap the limb and slowly introduce the venom. Only if serious reactions develop do they use antivenom. Every hospital has the ability to rapid test for specific venoms, so there is no need to try to photograph or capture the snake.
The temperature was in the lower to mid 80’s while we were there, so it was nice to get back into the air conditioned bus for the ride back to the ship. Our one disappointment with the excursion is they didn’t include lunch. There was a concession where you could by gator kebabs and other park foods but you were on your own for that. They did give everyone a bottle of water, which helped with the heat.
Passengers had the option to hop off the bus in downtown Cairns or go back to the ship directly. Ben hopped out to stroll through the waterfront while Janet headed back to the ship and had a well appreciated tea time.
After dinner, we skipped desserts to so a “Before They Were Famous” trivia. We teamed up with another couple who were from Australia, and also named John and Linda, like our progressive trivia partners, but a different couple. We won coasters on that.
Next was a new comedian named Tahir. A very unusual Turkish name. That made up some of his material. People always say “that’s an unusual name you don’t hear every day” but actually I do hear it every day because it’s my name. He was good for a few laughs although both Janet and Ben took turns nodding off through parts of the act.
Tomorrow is a sea day as we cruise around the Cape York Peninsula, which is the largest wilderness in northern Australia. It is mostly flat and about half is used for grazing cattle. A lot of Cairns residents like to camp in the wilderness. Our guide joked that the Toyota HiLux is the official vehicle of Cairns. We did see a lot of overlander rigs on the streets.
