Swimming and Kuranda

Summary: Even their healthcare is good, we swim more before 9am than… we intended to, Kuranda: getting there is most of the fun, Cairns key takeaways

Last night Alex was sick. I had twice thought of mentioning in the blog that he and I have had nagging cold symptoms, but it got deleted prior to posting as Too Much Info. Still, his cough had been going on a while and he seemed to be moving a little slow. So around 4:30pm we called the 24 Hour Medical Centre. They said there was about a half hour wait, but they could give us a solid appointment for 8:30 pm. If we chose to show up earlier they could probably fit us in. Well, I let Alex sleep until it was about time to go, but they still got us in a few minutes early. After thrice answering to different people that we do not have an Australian Medicare Card, we were told in extremely apologetic terms that we would have to pay for the docs visit and any medications then work it out with my insurance company. They really felt bad about sticking it to the foreigner. “Sure,” I said, “we can do that, how much will it be?” $65. I figured there must be a catch – seeing a doctor on short order with no insurance, I was looking for a bigger number. Part of me expected a trainee. No, we got a competent doctor who was in the prime of his career (age/earning potential wise) and he had good bedside manner. Throw in the Amoxacillin, we still got out for under $80 total. That’s a pretty reasonably priced night on the town in any city, let alone that we might get some of it back when we submit a form to our insurance. You’re probably wondering how much the Aussie Tourism Board is paying me (zero so far, but I can be had for a reasonable price if anyone is asking). Seriously, I promise that I will run into some incompetent jerk. I may even find some common trait among Australians that irritates me. Still, for now, even when things go wrong Australia comes out smelling like a rose. If I can have a positive healthcare experience, this really is the Lucky Country.

Umm, that’s great. Your kid? The sick one? Any news there? Alex has a mild chest infection and the doc says it should clear up pretty quick. Whether it was the placebo effect or maybe it was being suspended at great altitude, but Alex was more himself today than the last couple days (a little more ornery and far more energetic). The cutest part is that I gave him the medicine and said it was to make his cough go away. This morning, he kept saying “I (am) still coughing” then running to the fridge as if to say “this doesn’t work – what gives?”

One last odd observation from the doctors’ office: living in California, I have found that doctors’ offices are great places to see how the same thing is written in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Tagalog, and several other languages. To that end, I have noticed that Cairns seems to have a reasonably large Indian, East Asian and Pacific Islander population. So, I looked around to see if things were written in Malay. Nope, just English and Japanese. Living in Japantown, I feel confident saying that there has not been significant emigration from Japan to anywhere, so it is safe to say that Japanese is there to serve the tourists. I will not make too much of a single data point, but it seems that the only places where many languages are offered are tourism related. One of the comments asked if I had seen many Aboriginal people – I have. Not sure if I never noticed on earlier trips or they simply were not there, but I see more people who appear to be Aboriginal than I had before (primarily in Sydney and Melbourne). Their stores are also prominent. We’ll see how things chance on that front once I get off the beaten track.

This morning we got up a little early again, but Alex was quite refreshed having slept about 12 of the previous 14 hours. We went walking into town and Alex noticed the Lagoon. There was simply no way to keep him out of the water. First we took off shoes, then shorts, next thing you know he is rolling in 4-6 inches of water (over sand). The Lagoon is wonderful – sort of a fake beach and water fountain facility staffed with lifeguards and surrounded by grass. The actual beach next to the Lagoon looked a little less inviting at low tide. Still, it is astounding that it can be 90 degrees and humid in a tourist town on the water with beaches and nobody is anywhere close to the beach. Getting back to the story, once I realized that any sunscreen would come right off, I left his shirt on and got him back to the hotel as quickly as I could. We applied sunscreen and found better swimwear. We then went to the hotel pool which is nice and secluded. Actually it is a little too secluded. It is on the same ground floor as the restaurant, lobby, etc. However, to get there, you go to the third floor, walk around until you find an unmarked door guarded with a hotel key entry, walk down two flights of stairs, up a half flight, slide your room key again, and you are there. That is the way you’re supposed to go (I asked). Seriously, this isn’t like “Chris-O’s Crikey Croc Cruise” (in my last post - accurate in spirit if not the more traditional definition of “accurate”), that is literally how you get to the pool. You can imagine my lack of surprise when we found only one other person there. It was quiet, surrounded by a tropical garden, shaped like a watch in a Salvador Dali painting, and completely unencumbered by people who just stumbled into it.

So after doing nothing in particular for a couple hours, Alex and I boarded the mini-bus to go to Kuranda. Our driver, like nearly every other Australian we’d met in Cairns, was from way down South. This one was from South Australia, but the proper answer to “are you from Cairns” is “I moved here from Melbourne area about 15 years ago”. That whole Queensland = Florida / Melbourne = Boston (with a little New York) comment is looking better all the time. Anyhow, we took the “SkyRail Cableway” on the way up and the train on the way back. It was amazing. Kuranda is a little settlement in the midst of the rainforest. In the interest of not duplicating things or spending the whole time trying to get a good shot, I only took photos on the SkyRail. Still, both rides were breathtakingly beautiful. On the ride up, you can get out of your gondola a couple times: the first time to walk through the rainforest and learn about the various trees and undergrowth (quite good) and the second time to check out various vistas on Barron Falls and the gorge. The nature and the landscape here is really dramatic and I confess that the photos do not tell the story adequately. The rainforest has trees that do not even put out branches until they are 50 meters tall, “saving their energy” as it were until they burst through the canopy. There are palms that actually have hooks on the end in order for the leaves to climb up over other plants and reach sunlight. Still others produce seeds that remain dormant until sunlight opens up (typically the falling of a tree), at which point they rapidly spring forth to fill the hole in the canopy. Of course, this environment creates an amazingly dense jungle. Trading notes with some Brits on the train back, we all agreed that we thought “if this gondola falls down, they’ll never find me in all this”. Cool jungle, incredibly steep mountains. They did not go all that high compared to the Rockies (where it can be 100 degrees in Salt Lake City and 65 in Park City) – it was still hot in Kuranda. But the mountains were extremely steep and the stories around the creation of the rail line were pretty cool. Next to all this scenery and history and nature, Kuranda is nice but it is just a tough act to follow. Kuranda is a tiny town now populated with tourist stuff. T-shirts, didgeridoos, stuffed animals, and mini-zoos. There was a classic pub next to the train station that would probably be equally appealing in a torrential rainstorm or sweltering day. There was a Butterfly observatory, a Koala park, a bird center, and the Australia Venom Zoo. Of course, we went to the Venom Zoo. This was purely for the scientific reason that I should see what adders and brown snakes and coastal Taipans and inland Taipans look like so that if I see any of them in other circumstances, I can explain in reasoned, informed terms why I was screaming with such a high pitch. Actually, most things I have read just have illustrations, so it actually was good to see what they physically look like. Nice guys run the place and it seems they just did some big filming with Animal Planet. If you see some special on it, you’ll know. The snakes were far more interesting than the freshwater stone fish (just sitting there) or the spiders sitting on their webs. One snake took a particular interest in Alex, only because Alex stood on the other side of the glass (both the glass tank and the glass separator were between him and the viper, for those of you concerned). Our guide offered, “This is the classic S-coiled striking position. Most snakes’ striking distance is 1/3 the length of their body, so this one would have a range of about 20 cm. Now there are snakes that are 20 feet long and they can…” Moving along, we spent the balance of our time with non-lethal critters who somehow made the cut to be at this Zoo. There were three Majestic Tree Frogs and one had evidently just finished him second double Latte of the afternoon shortly before we arrived. Very Cute, Very Green – I think this is the frog that the Rainforest Café’s logo is based on.

So we are about done with Cairns. Cairns is a regional hub for Northern Queensland. The big industries here are tourism and sugar cane. There is a reason the tourists come here: warm weather, amazing nature, great service oriented towards tourism, and that reef thing. The downtown that one would visit is basically a 4x5 grid of streets set on an oceanfront. (the picture is from the Hilton, facing town) The ocean has no waves, so surfers don’t have to lament being unable to do their thing here because of the jellyfish. Anyhow, we have enjoyed getting the ball rolling here. Tomorrow, we venture into the interior. The plan is to drive to Normanton (just off the Gulf of Carpenteria). If we really move and groove, we could get to Cloncurry (highly doubtful). Cloncurry has the honor of having set the highest temp ever in Australia: 53.6 celsius (back in 1889). I know that 50 degrees is 122, so it seems it reached about 129. I won’t come within 25 degrees of that tomorrow, right? I wonder what the weather in Minneapolis is.

Preview for tomorrow – make our escape and drive West. I have no idea what we’ll see and do of note. (nice preview, huh?) Not sure I’ll get online every day, but I will try.