Sydney to Cairns

Tiger airways plane

Early start this morning to catch our 9am flight to Cairns, and drop back an hour in time this time. All very smooth and easy, and loved our Tiger aeroplane! Picked up our new wheels for the next 9 days at the airport, and are happily enjoying a bit of public transport freedom, even if it is with the bunny hopping joy that a new car brings,

Hire car, named Bruce, as we will be travelling the Bruce Highway!

We decided on a quieter day today, not the planned Kuranda cable car, as we were a little longer than planned getting the car sorted, and the weather was looking stormy all afternoon, and the mist was settling heavily over the top of the mountains. We decided to try the Crystal Cascades water falls and swimming hole, about 20 minutes outside of Cairns. Checked into out new Youth hostel and headed up there. We found it ok, considering it is not an advertised attraction for tourists, but a few people had recommended it on tripadvisor. It was a nice little 1km walk up to the falls and then we went back halfway down to where the swimming holes started and chose the one that the most kids in it...I think we should have actually looked in the water ourselves because, it turned out to be the rockiest stretch of river bed and our kids, although they loved the water, really struggled with the rocks underfoot. I, having broken my little toe yesterday I suspect, also struggled with walking in the water, so didn't last too long either!

We also realised half way through our swim that we were the only non-aboriginal people in this bit of the river, definitely a well kept local secret! Very pretty though.

Crystal Cascades

Came back to the hostel and had a swim in the little pool here, as it was super humid and heavy, then went down to the sea front to, yet another, night market for tea, that's when the lightening show started. Astonishingly, there were also hundreds and hundreds of huge bats flying everywhere along the front two blocks back from the seafront, circling round and round...the noise was astounding, the trees were dripping with them!! Nobody seemed too shocked by it though, so presume they are regulars to the evening scene there. Luckily we are a few blocks further back ;-)

As we finished our tea, and were enjoying the lightening spectacular, the house-shaking thunder and torrential down pour started. Fingers crossed it will clear the air a bit for some sunshine tomorrow, we've had a lot of heat and humidity but not much in the way of blue sky sunny days yet. Tomorrow is the start of our drive down to Brisbane, it's a long way, about 1700km but we have 8 days and loads of great stuff to see on the way :-)