I had a terrible sleep last night. Couldn’t get to sleep without pharmaceutical assistance, and then I couldn’t stay asleep.
I must be worried about the holiday ending and having to go back to work.
Um, nope … it can’t be that.
One of the benefits of working for Queensland Rail is that there are some employee benefits once you have been there for >12 months.
Like getting a free Kuranda Scenic Railway ticket for myself and MBW. It would have been nice if we’d been bumped up into Gold Class, but hey … you can look a gift-horse in the mouth, but you can’t make it drink.
We needed to be at the Cairns Train Station – about 45 minutes away from Fishery Falls – by 9.00am, so the alarm woke us at 7.00am. Which funnily enough was about the only part of the night that I slept well and I was woken by the alarm 🙁
Up, showered, breakfasted, and lunch snacks packed and ready to go by just after 8.00am. A bit later than I would have liked, but it was an easy run into Cairns.
There was a really heavy dew this morning, and a really heavy fog laying over the sugercane, but it cleared to a cracker of a day.
We got ourselves parked and checked in by 9.00am, ready for a 9.30am liftoff.
We found our seats and were ready to roll … and they made an announcement that due to “operational issues” on the other (earlier) KSR service, we would be delayed.
And delayed we were … until about 10.30.
We finally got away at 10.30am and stopped at Freshwater Station to pick up more passengers.
The trip up to Kuranda takes about 2 hours, and they slow or stop a couple of times so you can take photos of the train, or the views, or waterfalls.
About 15 minutes before we got into Kuranda, the train stopped for 10 minutes at the majestic Barron Falls and we all got out for a look.
We got into Kuranda and had a bite to eat, then went in search of coffee. We asked the girl in the coffee shop where to find the markets – MBW loves markets – and she told us to go down the street, turn right at the round-about and the “heritage” markets would be on the left, while the “other” markets would be on the right.
“Other” markets? I think that the word she was looking for was “alternative”.
If you were wearing shoes, or didn’t have at least 10 piercings, then you didn’t really fit in. It probably would have been helpful if I’d taken a machete with me so I could hack my way through the incense and cigarette (dope?) smoke, but alas …
It was very much like Nimbin. If you’ve ever been to Nimbin, you’ll know what I mean.
Unusual. Alternative.
Because the KSR was an hour late leaving Cairns it meant that we had an hour less to explore Kuranda. But you know what … even with an hour less in Kuranda, we were still struggling to fill the time that we had there.
MBW can spend hours looking around markets, but even she’d had enough.
We headed back to the Kuranda Station in plenty of time for the return trip at 3.30pm, and killed some time at the station.
Unsurprisingly, the trip down the mountain was much the same as the trip up, only in reverse. Same stop at Barron Falls for another photo opportunity.
We got back into Cairns around 5.30pm, found Elsie where we had left her, and headed back towards Fishery Falls. We needed to get some fuel ready to head off from Fishery Falls in the morning, and some groceries.
We will be staying at Paronella Park for a couple of nights then making a run for home. We will probably be staying off the grid for a few nights after Paronella Park, so we need to make sure that we have all of our essentials on board … and I doubt that we will be able to access any supermarkets easily for the next few days, as we will have Percy on the back and the bigger cities make it tricky to park.
We got treated to a stunner of a sunset on the way home which was the perfect end to the perfect day.
Home to Fishery Falls, dinner, shower and into bed early to make up for the loss of sleep last night.
That’s about it.
I went to bed with a bit of a headache, but I guess that breathing second-hand incense and dope smoke will do that to you.
Ciao
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