Dan and I arrived fresh after 36 hours of travelling to get to Australia. Due to spending more time in Koh Tao than we planned, we ended up doing an island hop involving boats, buses and planes, with Malaysia being sadly crossed off the list and marked for a visit another day. But the exitement of being back in Australia made us forget any fatigue we may of had.
My last memory of Cairns was partying to excess and doing an introductory dive. In one place, I read a great, if somewhat old line that does nicely sum up the experience:
“The drinking town with a diving problem”
This time, we had Dai with us, who was waiting at the hostel to greet us. Unfortunately, diving was crossed off the list this time due to Tropical Cyclone Larry making conditions out at sea – and later inland – a tad demanding and not all that conducive to a good time.
With this in mind, we resorted to the next best thing (again)… Partying till the wee hours every night. The guesthouse we were staying in, Nomad Serpents, was well geared up for such activities and so were the great staff. Julie, the main event organiser was great at getting everyone in a party mood – and my god could she handle her drink! She was one of the last standing in the century club (we were sensible enough to only watch this event). For those who don’t know what that is, it involves drinking one shot every minute to 100, with no toilet breaks and a couple of challenges, such as everyone changing seats within 5 seconds, thrown in for good measure. We sat on the side lines helping to come up with more and more taxing challenges for the beleaguered competitors (Can’t imagine why they looked cross with us).
Other nights included St Patrick’s day, helped by most of the staff in the resort being Irish. Then there was the quiz night, the bar crawl and some other events. We had some great nights, and met some fantastic people but the days were rather lacking as a result.
Around Cairns, you can wander the quite well stocked shopping centre, and the many photo galleries – Australia is such an amazing place, with so many wonders that it seems that a lot of people make their livings just from photographing their own country. There’s also the great walk along the Esplande, with a great exercise routine thrown in if you feel fit (we didn’t due to bodily abuse).
Due to Cyclone Larry’s appearance, we ended up back in Cairns as, after leaving Port Douglas (our next port of call), we couldn’t get past Innisfall due to the roads being flooded, so we returned to Cairns. As for Innisfall, I’ve never seen anything like it. Every other building was pretty much demolished, and people were lingering on the streets with army vehicles and soldiers clearing the streets. One nice thing we saw, that showed how people were trying to help, was a convoy of Dominoes Pizza vans we followed who were giving away free food to the people on the streets. It was really heart warming to see a smile return to the peoples faces after the tough time they’d had.
Overall, Cairns is great fun, but it can be bad for your body (and your wallet), but for all the excess, we did have a brilliant time (again)!
Cairns, Australia - nightime
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Cairns, Australia - in pictures
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