30 Days Down Under - Part 5 - Melbourne

Flying to Melbourne

This preamble is too long and is likely boring and extraneous.  I encourage you to ignore it and jump to the rest of the blog below my aerial photo of Melbourne.

Returning our Budget rental car at the Cairns Airport for our flight to Melbourne was a small confusion, one of those things that happens on trips.

The overhead signage made it clear where to return rental cars for all of the companies ... except not Budget. We had picked up the car in the domestic terminal parking, so presumed the return was there. Nope. The only sign we could see for Budget directed us towards the international terminal, so questioningly that's where we went. There were a few stalls marked for Budget, but it was outside of the lot for most of the car returns and it wasn't explicitly signed for car returns. We tentatively parked there and determined that I'd wait in the car while Ginny went in and enquired at the counter.  I waited.  And I waited.  I tried her cell phone.

Here I should interject. In the States our phone plan is with T-Mobile.  Their standard plan gives us free text and data almost anywhere in the world, and worldwide voice calls only cost a little (20 cents/minute in Australia). So we both take our phones on trips; we figure that's a way to find each other if we get separated. But that plan works only if BOTH phones are turned on and not in airplane mode.

No answer - I got her voicemail.

She had not taken her camera.  Once, in a German hill town with the streets a warren and higgly-piggly, we had parked our car somewhere and couldn't find where we left it.  We approached various people and tried to describe where we had left it ... that's almost impossible in a strange town filled with half-timbered buildings and cobbled streets with few signs, especially with only a rudimentary knowledge of the language. Luckily we eventually found someone who thought they knew what we might be trying to describe ... they surprisingly were able to show us a way to the car. After that, if we were in a location where we might get lost, we'd developed a habit of taking strategic photos at every turn of our route ... like bread crumbs, we could always retrace our steps on the camera's screen. But who needs to do that in an airport, right?

Eventually I broke the cardinal rule ... if separated, one of you stay where you last were together, otherwise you might both wander forever missing each other.  I got out of the car to look for her.

Luckily I hadn't gotten too far before I ran into her.  She had gone into the international terminal and found the Budget counter there unattended, so she walked to the domestic terminal.  The counter there was unattended too. Trying to return to the car, she ended up searching through the various parking areas until we found each other.  When we returned to our car another couple pulled up and asked us where they should return their Budget car. We finally used the key drop at one of the counters, along with a note about where we'd left the car.  We forewent the quick dinner that we no longer had time for, and hurried to check in.  A few days ago we got our credit card bill.  They must have found the car.  The statement was for the expected amount.

Welcome back to the travel blog.

In many ways, when two people are flying together, it's handy to be in a plane that has only two seats abreast next to the windows.  But in other ways, having three seats abreast can result in fascinating conversations if people are interested in talking.  The plane we were on had three abreast.  The woman who had our window seat seemed pleasant - we exchanged the normal pleasantries, but she was busy reading so we were quiet. Eventually, as we got close to Melbourne, her home, she began engaging, pointing out things through the window and telling us about Melbourne.  I think she didn't mind me reaching over to take photos out the window.

We grabbed a cab to the hotel.  We're not in the habit of using taxi's (or Uber - Wall Street's way of transferring money from those slaving in the gig economy to their coffers). We usually either drive, bike, or use public transport. But throughout this trip we took taxis to/from the airports to save the hassle of both of us schlepping our luggage on public transport - we did enough of that when a bit younger.

I'm glad I didn't have to drive in Melbourne; it's questionable whether I would have gotten used to Melbourne's unique way of making a right turn from a busy two direction street (I'd read about it, but never quite figured it out from descriptions.). I watched attentively as our taxi driver, when we needed to turn right, would pull to the left, almost into the crosswalk, to let traffic behind him pass, and then just as the signal changed, would turn right across all lanes of the stopped traffic.  Eventually I realized that there was a separate signal with a right turn arrow that synchronized the traffic for those maneuvers.  It's easier to understand when seen than when one reads about it. And amazingly, it works.

Months before we left on our trip we had decided on a good but economic hotel that was centrally located and handy for walking. We'd stayed at a lot of Ibis in Europe ... economical, functional, dependable, and clean. So we had booked the "Ibis Styles Melbourne, The Victoria Hotel" - a strange amalgam of two names that, we found, were equally well understood by using either of the two names individually or both in tandem.

When our taxi pulled up in front of the hotel we were a bit worried, hoping our rooms would be on the back.

It was Saturday night. Across Little Collins Street from the hotel was a nightclub with the door open, people standing outside, emitting music with a low-frequency thumping beat. (I wonder how a Daintree cassowary would react. Their bird calls are super-low frequency - a sound that travels best and further through the rainforest or other obstructions ... Hmmm ... Primeval music)

In the ensuing Sunday and Monday evenings the door was closed and silent. It was just a blank, unmarked door in an unmarked wall without any sign. Had I been younger and single it would have been worth exploring that night.

Just a few feet down the street, at the corner of Swanston Street, was a small plaza with a busker with an amplifier playing his guitar and singing. A crowd had gathered, sitting on the plaza's steps and raised planters to listen to him and watch people dance to his music.

Luckily we needn't have worried about the noise.  During the rest of our stay the activity and noise wasn't happening. And to our relief, our assigned room was far, far away on the back.  We had to take an elevator to the 6th floor, walk down a long hallway through a few sets of glass fire doors, then take another elevator to the 7th floor, more glass fire doors, 2 corridors, and finally, our room.

The hotel  apparently was at one time one of the elegant major hotels in the city.  It seems to have gradually expanded, albeit much more functionally without its former elegance, amalgamating several adjacent buildings. When we checked in the clerk apologized for the distance to our room and said they'd get us a closer room the next day. But the room, and its walk, were fine with us.  Like every Ibis we'd previously stayed in until then, the hotel and the room were perfectly fine ... functional, clean, and well kept.

After settling our bags into the room we tried to find a place to eat our delayed dinner.  We walked a bit but finding nothing better, resigned to a Starbucks, eating sandwiches amongst the typical Saturday-night-downtown couples in it.  It was caddy corner from the busker's plaza, so after eating we wandered over to join the crowd listening to his music (he was very good) and watching the dancing.

Exploring Melbourne

First thing in the morning we wandered the 3 blocks down Swanston Street amidst its trams, people walking, and people biking to Federation Square.

Melbourne is well-known for having lots of of trams (street cars), and as this picture shows, has a fair number of  cyclists. I wonder how they deal with the danger the tracks' rails pose to people biking. (See summaries of their danger from  City lab here and from a cyclist here, both referencing a  Study of Toronto here)

Reminder: click on any picture in the blog to enlarge it

On the way to Federation Square we passed a construction site for a major underground transit tunnel.

On this trip we noticed massive transit tunnels and accompanying transit and improvements for people walking and biking being built in Sydney and Auckland.  On a previous trip to China we saw such projects everywhere.

Vancouver Canada has a well developed public transit system; it  is the only major North American city with NO freeway within its city limits. Now more than 50% of all trips are totally by walking, biking, or using public transit. Background to Vancouver's approach to transportation is here

People in Seattle, WA, USA voted for, and taxed themselves for, major public transit system improvements which are partly built and partly in planning. (map here and history of voter approval here)
...BUT...
The system in Seattle depends on the continuation of federal funding at past levels. Trump has indicated he would abolish most, if not all, of the federal funding for public transit. It's heartening to visit countries like Canada and Australia which seem to be forward looking and robust while Trump's USA seems more like Britain post WWI, walling itself off and isolating itself from the world, its arms and fingers tightly clutching at its past and its hoard of gold.

Our first stop: Federation Square.

Built in the 2000's it's a very large precinct with an expansive plaza swarming with people on this sunny early spring day, with multiple stepped levels opening into angular public buildings with complex geometries, all built over a rail yard.

It's the center of tourist interest: it's next to Princes Bridge and Swanston Street, which together are the focus of most of Melbourne's tram system, and it's across the street from the major Flanders Street rail station.

In the square were all sorts of canopied booths - one especially caught my eye - a recruiting booth for the State of Victoria police: "Be a Force for Good". What a great way of thinking about the role of police - far removed from the rancor that's happening in Seattle about the role of police.  I sent the photo to one of Seattle's police community relations officers.

Major promenades and parks fan out from Federation Square in both directions along the Yarra River. And it has a surprisingly large and well-staffed two level tourist information center where we oriented ourselves and picked up walking maps.

Melbourne's Streetscape:

Melbourne's center has an unusual grid layout that has created much of Melbourne's ambiance.  Major multi-lane di-directional streets are very long blocks apart, about 760 feet in both directions.

Running roughly parallel to the Yarra river are Flinders, Collins, Bourke, and others major streets. Halfway between each are smaller streets, mostly 1 lane, one-way, sometimes with parking on one side (Flinders Lane, Little Collins Street, Little Bourke Street, etc.)

Running perpendicular to the river are the major streets such as Russell, Swanston, Elizabeth, and others.  But there are no intermediary secondary streets interspaced between them.  Instead, in place of any intermediary streets, in the 19th century a number of narrow arcades were built with glassed roofs arching overhead.  Carefully maintained, they are now one of Melbourne's major attractions.  One of the tourist information maps outlines a route through them. We followed it..

Melbourne is a mix of the formal and more elegant past and the cacophony of the 21st century.  Between the major streets are many (far more than the tour books suggest) small alleys or lanes containing other attractions which Melbourne tolerates and is noted for: street art (graffiti)  - layers upon layers of it in continuous anarchistic change. Much of it is a horrible mess, but much of it is in the best tradition of street art. I especially liked the eye below the arc of color.

Art, Bridges, Promenades, and Parks

Melbourne also curates a more relaxed personality.  Extending from Princes Bridge and Federation Square in both directions along the Yarra River are parks, promenades, and walks linked across the river by many modernistic pedestrian bridges.

The art along the river is less spontaneous than that in the lanes, but it's still lively.

One of the bridges across the Yarra, Sandridge Bridge, is an artistic ode to immigrants.
It is a former railroad bridge from the 1880's that was converted in 2006 into a bridge for walking and biking.  It has large steel sculptures, "The Travellers" by Nadim Karam, some of which periodically travel across the bridge on a system of rails. (We weren't there at the right time. We didn't notice them moving.)

It includes a multitude of glass panels, one for each country from which people immigrated to Melbourne.

Click on the photo to enlarge it to read

For each country the panels list the regions the immigrants came from, an historical summary of the waves of immigration including the cause of the wave(s), and the number of immigrants from that home country.

I sadly wonder if the Statue of Liberty in New York City, which is inscribed "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." would be erected today if it was newly proposed.

Photo by Donaldytong from Wikimedia Commons under share-alike license 

Along both banks of the Yarra are a variety of promenades and walks.

Downstream (to the west and south of Princes Bridge and Federation Square), it is urban and crowded.

A short walk upstream (east of  Princes Bridge and Federation Square) the river is lined with parks.















St. Kilda

One afternoon we took the tram to St. Kilda.

Across from Federation Square, between two tram tracks in the middle of Swanston Street, is a busy boarding platform. They even have "station" attendants announcing and coordinating trams and helping guide people to the correct car.  Coming from the US with its historic austerity, especially austerity about government programs.  That's one of the things we noticed about Australia - the number of people performing public jobs that in the US would be non-existent.

Like many typical males, I tend not to ask directions.  So my better half approached an attendant to check if I was right about which tram to take.  To my ear Ginny, after living in the states for 30 years, doesn't have a Canadian accent.  But the attendant immediately picked up on it. A conversation ensued, squeezed in between his announcements and answering tourists - a couple of trams to St. Kilda passed.  He had lived in Alberta Canada, where his mother still lived.  He was proud to be a citizen of, and hold passports from, three countries ... Croatia (or one of those nearby countries - I can't remember which - his birth country), Canada, and now Australia.  I wonder which of those countries the glass panels on the Sandbridge Bridge would have accounted him on. Gone is the world when many people ignorantly feared roaming outside of their tribe.

In St. Kilda we walked along the beach and spent some time watching the kiteboarders. We had hoped to see the small colony of Fairy Penguins on the jetty, but because the jetty was fenced off, and/or we didn't know precisely where to go, and/or we didn't stay late enough into the evening, we didn't see them.




Exhausted

We were only in Melbourne for two full days ... and did too much in much too little time. We were exhausted.

One of our difficulties in travelling is eating.  We're not great foodies; we just use food as body fuel.  We do like good food and delight in finding it.  But it doesn't work out too well to research a list of good places - generally we can't predict where we'll be at meal time and just try to find some place nearby when we're hungry. Consequently, most of the meals we have are mediocre at best (we have to figure out a better way).  But...

Of all the meals we had in Australia, one of our favorites was in Melbourne.  We'd been busy walking that afternoon ... it was warm and sunny so we hadn't taken jackets.  Clouds came in quickly.  We were in Flanders Lane, not far from our hotel when it started to rain.  We noticed a place that looked nice and (a good sign) busy. The greeter had only one spot left ... a long table for about or 9 people that we could share with three others. They were at one end, we at the other, close enough that we could have talked if all had wanted, but far enough apart that it wasn't awkward ignoring each other.  They were busy whining about this and that, so we enjoyed our own company.  It was a great Asian-fusion food place called Supernormal.

Our biggest regret about our trip to Downunder was that we spent too little time in Melbourne.  There was much more to explore in this truly world class city. And it would also have been great to have extra time to get out and explore the Great Ocean Road, to get to Phillips Island, and strangely, to get to Ballarat.

Ballarat?  We don't watch much TV, but Seattle's PBS stations carry a number of Australian series which we do watch: A Pace to Call Home, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and especially, Dr. Blake Mysteries which is set in post WWII Ballarat. And it has a strong place in Australia's history.

We were exhausted. When we got done eating at Supernormal we hurried back to our hotel through the rain, and bedraggled and wet, we got to bed for our early flight to Hobart, hoping to keep the flying petri dish's respiratory thing at bay.

Hopefully you weren't as exhausted by this too-long report as we were.  Hobart, Queenstown, and Auckland are yet to come.

30 Days Down Under - Part 4 - Port Douglas: The Daintree & The Reef

Flying to Cairns & Port Douglas

The most common way to get from Ayers Rock to Cairns (I'll never learn how to pronounce that right the Ozzie way) is to take a long flight to Sydney, mess with a transfer, and then take a long flight up to Cairns - all totalling 8 hours or far longer. There are lots more choices that way and it's far cheaper.
But to save time we chose to splurge and take the only flight direct between the two - Qantaslink - 2 1/2 hours.  Unfortunately, the flight is in late afternoon, so it was after 7:00 PM by the time we disembarked and picked up our car for our drive to Port Douglas; much of the drive was in the dark.

Click on any photo in the blog to enlarge it

On the flight we came across a strange surprise - a help wanted ad in the flight magazine. And look at the advertised wage, plus a ute (4wd utility vehicle)!
What kind of economy does Australia have?

In the Cairns airport we found the Budget rental counter, got in their car, and were off to Port Douglas.  It was a bit confusing leaving the airport, but we soon found our way.

We had read about the many roundabouts on the highway north toward Port Douglas.  We were a bit apprehensive ... in a long past trip to the UK the joke had been that when we approached a roundabout warn me, and even though I was driving, I'd hide until we were past. But this time, even though many were 2 lanes wide with heavy traffic in both lanes, it felt more comfortable.

The road eventually narrowed to 2 lanes with almost no shoulders as it tightly twisted through unknown terrain. Luckily we came across a driver who drove similarly to me, pegged at the speed limit. It was relaxing following the red tail lights rather than trying to peer into the darkness past the headlights' beam, looking for curves or rockfall or the feared nocturnal animal crossing the road.

At Port Douglas we found the Outrigger Port Douglas Holiday Apartments, set amidst its lush tropical gardens, found the manager's instructions to our second floor walkup apartment (we had warned them we'd be late). The apartment was spacious ... kitchen, living & dining room, bedroom ... the rooms arranged in an L-shape around a large patio-balcony ... large sliding doors (with screens) and copious opening windows let in the tropical air.

We unpacked then walked the two or three blocks to Macrossan Street, Port Douglas's main drag, to find a place to eat. The first thing we noticed was a sure sign of a tropical tourist town: a semi-open-air walkup liquor store. We bypassed it ... forty years ago I'd have walked in and picked up several bottles (and those bottles would not have been bottles of beer *if* it was one of those rare moments at that age when I could afford more than brew). But nowadays we drink more water and coffee, having, at dinner, only one glass of wine (Ginny) or a beer or a double shot of whisky neat (me) or the very occasional cocktail (both).

Best of all, our apartment had its own washer and dryer. We'd planned the next day to be a "down day", a chance to wash our clothes and relax after having been on the go for 10 days after leaving home - especially after the dusty red earth of the Red Center, and to shop for food for our breakfasts and picnics (dinners as always were to be in restaurants - who wants to mess with cooking on a holiday), and to explore the more-tropical-than-California town.

We awoke early to dawn's raucous cacophony of birds in the palm and other tropical trees outside our windows.








We'd always known that Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef were on the coast of Australia, vaguely on the western edge of the south Pacific Ocean, but were a bit surprised when we realized that it's on the shores of the Coral Sea, only about 500 miles from New Guinea.

It was more tropical than we expected. The air wasn't just hot;
it was sticky.  Sweat didn't evaporate.  The dryer in our apartment wasn't vented to the outdoors, increasing the humidity. We kept all the windows and doors open and hung stuff to "dry" on the patio when it wasn't in shade.

All of that while realizing that we were there on a *relatively* cool day with clouds hinting at the possibility of a tropical rain. Unfortunately (?) it didn't rain on us.







It was early spring, with summer yet to come, but even then people tended to lounge around pools and wear swimming suits downtown. (We're possibly the only people who came to Australia without swimsuits. I cooled myself off by thinking about being in the Pacific Northwest mountains, dipping nude into an alpine tarn fed by melting nearby snow.)

Sugarcane

Next day we drove north of Port Douglas through Mossman to the Daintree Rain Forest, a UNESCO world heritage site.


I had always imagined Mossman to be a tiny hamlet tucked between trees and waterfalls in a rain forest.  It's not. It's mostly a farming town in the middle of a large and unexpected sugarcane growing area ... and apparently early October when we were there is the middle of harvest.

There were machines that looked like old wheat threshing machines from the early/mid 1900's cutting the cane.  And there was a small narrow-gauge railroad that wended its way along and across the highway, with branches into what seemed like almost every cane farm, trundling trains of cars loaded with cane to a plant in Mossman. It was fascinating, but we were in too much hurry to get to the Daintree to stop for photos, so here are some photos from the web.

(Photos by Craigle (top) and Bahnfrend (bottom)
from Wikimedia Commons)

Daintree Rainforest

This was THE HIGHLIGHT of our stay in Port Douglas, unexpectedly topping the Great Barrier Reef.
"The Daintree Rainforest is one of the most spectacular ecosystems in the world"- Dr. David Suzuki

It's hard to overstate the importance of the Daintree and its history.  It's *interesting* to look at, see, and explore. But when one learns its history and finds out more one is simply awestruck and dumbfounded.

The Daintree Rainforest is estimated by scientists to be between 110 and 180 million years old!!!

Yes. That would make it and its ecology existent before Australia and Antarctica broke free from the former continent of Gondwana and drifted apart.

At the visitor center we picked up a colorfully illustrated 74 page summary of Daintree, its history, ecology, plants, and animals:  Daintree, Jewel of Tropical North Queensland by Lloyd Nielsen, 1997 (obtainable from Lloyd Nielsen, PO Box 55, Mount Molloy, QLD, 4871, Australia or online at this link)

There is lots of information about Daintree online (google is your friend). Some quick summaries include Discover The Daintree and CapeTribBeach.com.au and an especially good one at this link that talks about both the forest and Cassoways

Although we left Port Douglas very early, we were in a hurry. We had scheduled tours with the naturalists at Cooper Creek Wilderness Tours starting at 11:30 halfway between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation and we didn't know how long we'd have to wait for the cable ferry across the river. It's reported that during busy times the wait can be hours (plural). We needn't have worried; we got there in plenty of time and there was no wait. That gave us time for a leisurely drive, sightseeing, and time to stop at the visitor's center as the road wound its way through the rainforest.

Although much of the Daintree along the roadside is wild, much land has been carved out of it.

Unfortunately Daintree has a long history of dismemberment by humans.  Sugarcane farming expanded into much of the area.  Parts were cut out by logging, others by speculators for small lot development. The severe rainfall and difficulty of access kept much at bay but dismemberment began to pick up in the 1960's. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's and later dispute raged, with some private interests and the governments of the shire (county) and Queensland on one side and the government of Australia and environmentalists on the other side. Much focused on a road proposed through the area in the 1980's.

Gradually the environmentalists began to prevail; the government of the shire reversed course, as did later the government of Queensland. In 1981 the Great Barrier Reef was listed as a UNESCO site followed by the Daintree in 1988.  A government buyback of properties was begun, but has since been discontinued so the fight goes on. See a partial history here and and also here

We drove down the barely-one-car-wide dirt and gravel drive into Cooper Creek Wilderness Tours http://coopercreek.com.au/ , where we got instructions directing us to the launch site for the first part of the tour, a one hour boat tour along Cooper Creek to see mangroves, river life, and hopefully, crocodiles (alas, none were to be seen).

While we were waiting for the boat tour we were joined by a family from the Netherlands.  They had just arrived the previous evening after long flights from Amsterdam to Hong Kong to Cairns.  The parents were exhausted  - they left to sleep; their 20 something son was raring to go. so Tom joined us for much of the day.

Afterwards we piled into our car, Tom showed us a nearby place to have lunch at a beach, then off we went back down the narrow road to meet a naturalist who would lead a smaller group on a fascinating and informative walk through the rainforest.

Like most visitors to the Daintree, we had been hoping all day to be lucky enough to see a cassowary.  At many places along the highway there had been the standard yellow diamond-shaped signs warning of animal crossings . But instead of silhouettes of leaping deer, they showed the silhouette of a cassowary.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Licualawin

Why warn about a bird crossing? They are flightless and big. Very BIG. And although they are ancient birds which have been around through prehistoric eras, they are now endangered, with only about, 1,200 to 1,500 left in Australia - too few to lose one to the car of a heedless driver.

Cassowaries can stand 6 feet tall, weigh 130 pounds,  jump 7 feet high into the air, and can run 30 mph. They have a reputation of being dangerous -  the middle of the three claws on each foot is sharp and can slash 2" or more deep - and they can kick - hard.  Luckily, they eat mostly fruit and only small animals like snails and frogs.

Because they have the reputation of being dangerous, and because they look (and are) prehistoric, youtube is full of videos about them: here - at the beach and here - a mini documentary and  here - being stalked

Our naturalist explaining: some trees use their roots as a buttress 

The naturalist told us there is a chance we'd see one. There was a female and several nesting males nearby and it was about time for their chicks to hatch and for them to be out and about.

Yup. The males sit on the eggs and tend the young.  A female cassowary will mate with several males; the last male is the one who sits on the eggs for about 50 days.  In the meantime she'll seek out other males and start over again.

He also assured us we'd be fine, be calm if one came around, that they are usually docile, more interested in eating fruit, and usually attack only in defense when disturbed or frightened.  The only person known to be killed by one had been chasing and harassing it ... he was killed by one kick that sliced his torso open from top to bottom.  Alas, we didn't get a chance to see one nor to be disemboweled.

He pointed out the the dangers of the  gympie-gympie plant, the stinging plant.  The hairs have a neurotoxin that is excruciatingly painful and keeps up until every one of them gets removed by a wax hair removal strip.  The pain is said to have caused people and animals to kill themselves.

He also pointed out the dangers of the pretty purple fruit that we often came across on the forest floor - cassowaries eat copious amounts of it with no ill effect (and they plant more by passing its stone in their droppings), but its skin contains a powerful neurotoxin to most other beings ... do not touch and if you do, wash immediately and do not touch your mouth.

I knew Australia was notorious for having more species of poisonous snakes and spiders and jellyfish than any other place on our planet. Damn. Even plants too.

At the end of the walk we hooked up with Tom's parents, said goodbye, and started back to Port Douglas, wishing that we could have planned to stay longer.

The Great Barrier Reef

The next day we got up early to walk to the harbor to take the Quicksilver cruise to the Great Barrier Reef.  What a change from the previous day ... from laid back walking in the rainforest to a one hour ride on a speeding catamaran holding over 400 passengers to Agincourt Reef - a platform on the Great Barrier Reef.  It was windy, so a bit rough.

We sat at a table with another couple only about a decade younger than us. And on the reef and on the way back ended up sitting and talking with them too ... we had a lot in common and had enjoyable conversations about our countries (they were from Sydney AU) and about travelling. They invited us to dinner when we were to pass through Sydney a week or so later. (Unfortunately, when we did get to Sydney, our plane was scheduled to arrive in the mid evening, our plane to Queenstown was scheduled to leave early the next morning, and Ginny's coughing was still bad, so we had to cancel.) 

One of the other things we had in common was that both our wives were affected by the motion of the boat ... they didn't get horribly seasick, but enough to make the trip unenjoyable.

Before we came on the trip we had debated how best to see and experience the reef. We both wanted to experience the outer reef.  ... But ... If outdoors people tend to arrange on a scale from more mountain oriented to more water/sea oriented, we're both on the mountain end of the scale. And if travellers are arranged on a scale from those who like to do things with big groups and those who don't, we're on the don't end of the scale.

If we were really into the sea and either snorkeling or diving, we would *definitely* have chosen a very small and active cruise to a more remote portion of the reef.  But Ginny definitely didn't want to snorkel (and she was justifiably nervous about getting seasick).  I'd have liked to snorkel, but it was no great deal to me to miss it.

Quicksilver has their large platform with various things to do to experience a curated part of the reef including looking out from a semi submersible and walking through an underwater passage, watching the (less colorful than expected) underwater  life.  So Quicksilver became our plan.

Am I glad we did it? Yup, given our interests.  Would I do it again? Nope.  What could have been better: snorkeling with a small group in a more remote place.

The Beach & The Drive

Before leaving we had to hit the beach at least once, so we walked the four blocks from our apartment to Four Mile Beach.  The signs at the entry add excitement, but the locals are comfortable using it and stinger season had not yet started. Although it was cloudy and a bit chilly there were some playing in the water. I wadded in. I'm used to the ocean being cold. The warm water was great!

4 Mile Beach - Port Douglas - See the kayaker?

We had lots of time so we mosied down the coast to the Cairns Airport, enjoying the scenery and the beaches that we had missed when northbound in the dark.  The Captain Cook Highway and its view reminded me of California Highway 1 north of San Francisco in the 1960's. There were pockets of development, but long stretches with unpopulated beaches.

At Rex Lookout, a hang glider was soaring on thermals,  jumping off, soaring down, then letting the thermal take him high over his takeoff & landing spot.  He had a sign out offering to sell tandem rides.

Last stop on our way to Cairns airport to fly to Melbourne: a picnic in the park at Palm Cove.