Australia, Kuranda: Mellow Mountain Town in the Rainforest

This Aboriginal man was taking it easy in Kuranda, trying to enjoy the cool shade of a large banyan tree
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Once we had packed up our things and Carl had looked at the checkout list for the house he had rented in Palm Cove, we put our bags in the back of the 4WD vehicle Carl had hired and he drove us to Kuranda, a small mountain town ten miles or so from Cairns.

Before taking the road to Kuranda, however, Carl stopped off at the same shopping centre we had gone to the night before, to see if he could find a charger for his GPS system at one of the shops, which were open then; they had been closed the night before. He didn't have any luck and we had to revert to an old fashioned paper map to get to Kuranda.

The pies were good, but the kangaroo one had a slightly gamey taste that we weren't sure if we liked

We shared a few pies for lunch in Kuranda; it was Carl's choice to try the kangaroo one, but we were glad to have tried it
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Carl happened to be travelling in the same area of Australia as we were and offered us a free place to stay at the house he had rented in Palm Cove. We were happy to accept his offer and even more pleased that he had rented a car to tour around that part of Australia for a few days, since we would have had to book ourselves onto package tours to get around anywhere. It worked out well for everyone; our travel budget was quickly depleting and Carl didn't necessarily want to travel around on his own.

This large stick insect was really interesting to watch before it flew away
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Before walking the streets of Kuranda, Carl drove us to Barron Falls, or at least to the car park where a trail to the waterfalls began. When he parked the vehicle, we all hopped out and started walking through the rainforest.

The trees were very dense in places, but there were also empty patches where a forest fire had destroyed part of the rainforest. Near the end of the trail, it continued above the Kuranda railway station before stopping at a large viewing platform.

The Kuranda Scenic Railway train runs from Cairns to Kuranda, through the mountains and along the side of a cliff near Barron Falls. The railway platform connected with a large viewing platform that we found ourselves stopping at when the trail ended.

It was hot and sunny in Kuranda during the first week of December and we had another photo taken with a Christmas tree to prove it
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When we looked over the railing at the scene before us, we saw the enormous Barron Falls, which was actually a large group of waterfalls and pools. The sight was spectacular and we really enjoyed seeing a lot of water gushing down the waterfalls, a result of heavy storms over the past two nights.

There were some interesting insects during our walk along the trail, but no animals. We attributed that to the fact that a lot of the rainforest was destroyed in a fire and that devastation possibly forced animals out to another section of the forest.

There was a lot of Aboriginal art in Kuranda
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Another possibility could have been that the area had too many human visitors, causing animals to find homes elsewhere. When we had walked back to Carl's rental car, he drove us to the town centre of Kuranda so we could explore it for a couple of hours.

The town of Kuranda was not large and we walked around most of its centre in under an hour. There were many cafes and souvenir shops, and also Aboriginal art museums and stores.

For lunch, we shared three pies from a local cafe: a minced beef one, a mushy pea one and a really special one with minced kangaroo meat. The pies were good, but the kangaroo one had a slightly gamey taste that we weren't sure if we liked; we definitely didn't prefer the kangaroo to the beef one, which was really tasty.

We were trying to look for snakes or spiders or anything else we could find and Carl caught this photo of us in action
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Kuranda was definitely set up to cater for tourists and the three of us got hooked into looking in several shops around the town centre. Whilst Carl bought a bar of lemon myrtle soap at one of the small, quaint stores, we didn't end up purchasing anything until we found a gelato shop.

The Italian style ice cream went down a treat after walking around on a hot afternoon, and we sat down to enjoy it before making our way back to the car. Our last stop in town was at a large Aboriginal art museum and store that was shaped like a large ship. We liked browsing through all of the displays, but were shocked with the extremely high price tags on most of the articles for sale.

The baby praying mantis in this photo was really tiny and cute
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When we had finished with Kuranda, having seen everything we thought we needed to see, Carl drove us back to Cairns, where we again looked for a GPS device charger to replace the one that had broken. It was an unsuccessful attempt and we headed to the airport afterwards to catch our flight to Darwin, the next destination on our trip.

Carl was heading there, too, and had booked himself onto the same Qantas flight that we were booked onto. At the airport, we were all able to use the Qantas lounge due to our statuses on OneWorld Alliance airlines. In the nice, comfortable lounge, we had some snacks and beers and checked emails whilst waiting for our flight to leave.