Cairns Skyrail and Kuranda village
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Fri 17 Aug 2012 04:16
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While staying in Cairns we took the Skyrail cable
car up to Kuranda village. The cableway runs over the rainforest so you
can get to see the tree canopy close up from above. There are walkways
through the forest at each of the stops.
Kuranda village was larger and more touristy
than we expected. Andrea bought a silver wire necklace at one of
the craft stalls. We managed to resist buying a certified authentic
digeridoo.
We visited the butterfly house, which is the
largest in Australia, and where they breed local species of butterfly for
display to the public. One of these is the bright blue Ulysses butterfly,
which is the unofficial emblem of Queensland. It only lives for three days
so there has to be a continual breeding cycle of the butterflies in order to
have plenty on display. Breeding them is not simply a question of
providing a house and some nectar for the butterflies, they have to collect
the eggs and take them back to the breeding station to wash off the
microscopic parasitic wasps that would infect most of the caterpillars
otherwise. They also have to allow the females to develop separately from
the males because, being in such close proximity, the females would otherwise be
mobbed on emerging from the chrysalis, before they could inflate their
wings.
Our return trip was on the classic Kuranda scenic
railway which was built by hand in 1887-91, to link the mining belt to the
sea.
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