Dodging Cyclone Nathan in Cairns!

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 13 Mar 2015 01:29
This weekend has been spent in Cairns avoiding the wrath of Cyclone Nathan who was due to make landfall as a category 2/3 on Friday just north of here. All we have seen, thankfully, is a bit of a breeze, but tons of water! We haven't been able to go out much and the charms of Cairns as a tropical town have been sort of lost on us, which is a bit of a shame. There is a great town centre, with lots of coffee shops, bars and restaurants a few of which we managed to try out between downpours!
One of the main tourist sites which is good in the rain however, is the scenic sky rail through the rainforest to the small village of Kuranda. There is a train that you do one way and the use the cable car to return, but the train has been closed for the past few days due to a flooded track. So despite the pouring rain we set off on Saturday via cable car.
The rainforest was spectacular, the colours were really bright in the rain, at least the bits we could see through the clouds where, at one stage, we couldn't see the car either in front or behind us!

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A very wet rainforest

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The cable car eventually appears through the mist!

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It's not all fun and sun!

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The most impressive waterfall we have heard in a while,

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Eventually the clouds cleared and we could see as well as hear it!

As an extra to the cable car ride, we did an Aboriginal culture walk as well. We were interested to see how different is the local culture in comparison to life in the desert. We had thought that it would be much easier here and that the rain forest would have provided such an abundance of food that life would be far easier, this however is surprisingly not the case. Far from wandering the forest and picking food almost like in a supermarket, much of the food still had to be cooked or processed in some way before being eaten, and a lot of the fruits and nuts from the trees are poisonous. Add to that the poisonous snakes, spiders and insects that abound in the rainforest and life suddenly becomes much more of a challenge!

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A huge golden orb spider, not terribly dangerous, but can give you a nasty bite!

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