Cairns; how I learned to love ya

Sunrise view of Cairns and the Esplanade shot from my hotel room

A city that is mostly purpose built for tourism is always going to feel just a bit contrived; a bit too constructed with a bit of a theme park feel to it. Cairns currently has a population of about 125 000 but millions of tourists stay here every year and most of them to dive on the Great Barrier Reef; making Cairns one of the most popular dive destinations in the world. There are an unbelievable amount of different tours available in Cairns and it can feel sometimes like one big tourist resort.

Cairns from above shot from my helicopter tour

However; look beyond all that and stay for some time and you discover a charming tropical town that is indeed very nice to call home for. I admit I did not like Cairns much last year, I was there for two days (spent 8 days in outback Cape York) and all I saw was tourists and souvenir shops everywhere. I arrived from Brisbane high on photographing big Cityscapes and was blind to the charms of Cairns. This time I was here for two weeks and ended up really liking Cairns! So it’s touristy. So what, I’m a tourist as well. Cairns still has a really nice small tropical town atmosphere with many quirky fun people and many things that are very hard to beat:

• Amazing best-of-the-tropics experiences just a few hours away. Not many cities can claim they have World Heritage sites like the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest just next door and go further north (I did that last year) and you have the very remote Cape York outback. Cairns really is gateway to some phenomenal tropical experiences.
• Tropical climate at this time of the year is just perfect. Sunny every day, around 27-30 degrees at day and around 18-20 degrees at night. Like some Cairns resident told me “It’s just pure hell living in Paradise”.
• Cairns is right on the ocean’s edge and the 4km long Esplanade is a great construction and a super place to relax during the day. It even features a large pool with an artificial beach (since Cairns itself has no beach, it’s one long mudbank)
• Laid back relaxed tropical lifestyle quickly becomes addictive!

Adding to this I managed to get a super nice (and huge, size of my flat back home) hotel room the last 7 days, top floor of Mercure Harbourside with a fantastic view of the Esplanade (see first picture in this post) from my roughly 6 meter long balcony. How to blag a room like this? Well the harbour view you pay extra for, but stay for quite a few days, say “make sure the room has internet as I’m a photographer and have business to do, lot’s of stuff to photograph here” (all the rooms have internet, but it helps to say you actually need it for business) Have your huge camera and lens on your shoulder when checking in and chances are you’ll get the best available room. It worked in Darwin, worked in Cairns! Waking up early every morning at 6am and watching the sunrise from my huge balcony on the 7th floor. Yeah, life’s pretty rough here!

One of my shots from the Esplanade at sunrise

The pool at the Pier on the esplanade

After spending two weeks in Cairns I have to agree with the bloke from Cairns who said to me “it’s pure hell living in paradise! More at my gallery.

Randomness

• I am now in big city Brisbane (known as “Brisvegas” or “Brissy”) and what a culture shock. I know Brisbane and really like it, have been here last year for a few days – but coming from the relatively small towns of Darwin and Cairns to a big city takes a lot of acclimatizing and is certainly a new chapter in this odyssey (I do miss my ocean view mega hotel room!). Brisbane is very good for gorgeous cityscapes at sunrise and sunset though so stay tuned for up-coming post about Brissy!
• Same day as I thought my Canon 5D broke…I hit the max limit for 30 days use on my VISA card so the ATM denied me any money and I had to use room service and charge the food to my room bill so I could eat a bit. Didn’t know there was a limit; fortunately an email to my bank removed the limit altogether so I can now spend till I’m broke (will be once I buy that helicopter)! Sunday was not a good day.

Quote of the day:

“Why can’t you people learn to speak my language? I learned to eat your food!”
- Homer Simpson in an episode where The Simpsons visit Italy

Cooktown, Kuranda and Daintree – Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Like the title here’s a bit of a mixtape for you of a few of my recent Cairns experiences in planes, trains and automobiles. Also check out quite a few new shots in my gallery.

Kuranda

Kuranda is a lovely little village north of Cairns that time almost forgot; quite busy during the day because of two major tourist attractions – Skyrail and Kuranda Scenic Railway. The Skyrail is great and an amazing piece of engineering but I reckon the most fun is the good old train, and here’s my postcard panorama of the train (shot out the window):

I was entertained all the way from Kuranda to Cairns by a mid-age couple from outback South Australia sitting next to me. She smiled a lot and handed out muesli fruit snack bars to everyone and he talked a lot about water (he worked with water, never did hear exactly what he did but probably something to do with water management, South Australia is super dry.) He was extremely impressed that I’ve been to Kununurra in Western Australia (Kununurra is right next to the massive Ord River) “Always wanted to go to Kununurra my whole life and see how much water they have mate” he said to me, “so did you see the Ord River mate, did you see it? What was it like, a lot of water there?”. “Yeah” I said … “heaps of water mate, you will absolutely love it!”

Cairns and surrounding area shot from Skyrail

Cooktown – there and back and there again

Named Cooktown because it is here that Captain James Cook and his crew spent 41 days repairing his ship after hitting the reef and damaging the ship Endeavour very severely. So grave was Cooks troubles that he named the place where he hit the reef Cape Tribulation. Well I encountered a few problems on the way to Cooktown as well! I went on a day trip where you fly up the coast to Cooktown and then drive the scenic ocean road the roughly 400 kilometers back to Cairns. We take off in a small 8 seater plane at 6.45am and have a beautiful 35 minutes flight to Cooktown in the morning light – only to find Cooktown airstrip completely shrouded in fog! We could not see the runway at all. This is from the airplane and you can see Cooktown on the right but the runway is somewhere underneath the fog:

We circled for 15 minutes but was running low on fuel – so we bloody had to return to Cairns. At 8.45 I sat in the same Skytrans terminal in Cairns with a heavy feeling of Deja Vu! At 9.30 we took off again for Cooktown, this time with an expectation of actually landing there! We did and although it cut the tour a bit short and left us with next to no time in Cooktown we did get to fly to Cooktown – twice!

The Lions Den – outback pub south of Cooktown

DAintree rainforest

A tropical rainforest is fantastic and it does not get much better than the Daintree Rainforest north of Cairns – the oldest rainforest on earth with trees that are more than a 1000 years old. It is just a phenomenal experience to walk around and study the plants, trees and wildlife. This is another of those ‘on another planet’ experiences. A polarizer filter is again a must for photographing in a rain forest and so are cloudy conditions which we were lucky to have (rain would have been nice too, but can’t have it all) as it brings out the green it shots like the one on the left.

On this 12 people trip there were 4 retired Americans from Tennessee; they were so incredibly nice and the most friendly and polite people you can imagine and they all had this fantastic slow southern accent (a drawl I believe it’s called) making them sound like a cross between Elvis, Forrest Gump & Clinton (although he’s from the neighbour state Arkansas). One of them (I’m terrible with names but he was The One With Best Accent) was videoing everything and did a running narrative as well into his video camera – hilarious stuff! “Nowwww this here is Dainnnntree Rainnnnnforest in Arrrwwwstraulia and that there is a strannnngler tree” spoken very slowly with some serious rolling on every “r”. I found it hard not to laugh every time he did it, loved it. “Now it’s been a rrrreallll pleasure meetin’ you; now you come see us soon in the United States” The One With Best Accent said to me as I left the truck. Would love to mate, especially if you can teach me that accent!

Randomness

• I hate it when tour guides say something along the lines of “the original settlement was a penal colony”. I beg to differ, the original settlement of Australia was the aboriginals! They were here for some 50 000 years before the white people, so yeah, it was sorta their country mate!
• This week I have a rather spectacular and huge room on the top floor (7th) of my hotel in Cairns with a great view of the ocean and the esplanade. The room is so large I can run around and exercise indoors! Means I don’t have to do my albatross impression down the esplanade in Cairns endangering all the other morning joggers who can actually run (they would be in serious danger of dying from either laughing or me crashing into them…or both)!
• Where’s the Great Barrier Reef shots you ask? They’re coming…still waiting for my helicopter flight to outer Arlington Reef. Stay tuned.
• ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ is outstanding, the 3 Bourne movies the best secret agent movies ever. I would be Jason Bourne except I can’t run. I could be Jason Bourne on a bicycle!

Quote of the day:

Only the paranoid survive