Tuesday 8 October 2024 – Our journey home started yesterday with the short flight from Lizard Island to Cairns, which didn’t produce any more memorable photos than the journey up.  When we got to the Hinterland terminal, we found that there was someone prepared to transfer us to our hotel, the Crystalbrook Riley. Whether this was Hinterland being service-oriented or the tendrils of the Lizard Island resort reaching out, I don’t know. Whatever, it was very welcome; and the chap who drove us there was an ex-scouser called Steve.  His family had come over as ten-pound poms and he’d lost any trace of his Liverpool accent, but he was very interesting to listen to. It wasn’t quite like a London cabbie saying “‘ere, do you know who I ‘ad the back of me cab the other day?” but he seems to have driven a lot of people around – Lee Marvin, George Harrison (who lived on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef for several years), various politicians; he was also interesting on the subject of the development of Cairns, which was once just a frontier town popular for visits by people doing Big Fishing. He was also good enough to drive us a little along the Esplanade and show us some of the older buildings in Cairns.

Another interesting nugget that he divulged was that yesterday, October 7, was a public holiday to celebrate the King’s birthday.  This is, we read, a Queensland Special; other states celebrate the King’s birthday at other times, many of them in June, to coincide with his official birthday in the UK. I suppose Queensland decided that it wanted a spring bank holiday and our Chas was a good, if tenuous, excuse. Steve’s final contribution was a venue recommendation for dinner.

We relaxed at the hotel for a couple of hours, as we were both beginning to feel a bit travelled out, to be honest; we’d been on the road for over two months. However, the lure of exploring a new place proved too strong, so we went for a walk. Obviously.

The Riley is on the Esplanade in Cairns. To be honest, as far as I can see, almost all of Cairns is on the Esplanade or just a block away from it; it’s not a large place. Most of the buildings are modern and not particularly tall, but there are some older ones among them.  We wanted to get in to St. Monica’s Church, which was opposite the hotel, but it was closed, I guess because public holidays and worship don’t mix here. Next door, though, was a rather nice deco building,

and further along the road were

the law courts, now an art gallery, and

the town hall, now the Cairns Library.

The road these buildings are on is one back from the actual waterside, so we walked over and alongside the water for a bit.

As you can see, it’s mudflats; close examination shows some mangrove roots and one or two small mangrove trees, and I guess they have to work at keeping the mangroves under control, otherwise the whole waterfront would just be a mangrove swamp. The mud seems to be an attractive place for pelicans

and egrets – there were a few, but then again….

The war memorial is by the water

and there’s a Ferris wheel in a waterside park, too.  It looked a little short of business, so we stumped up the necessary to have a ride and spun round half a dozen times. It gave us a bit more of a view over the city.

The Ferris wheel is in a park area; it being a sunny and warm public holiday, there were a lot of people around. There was even a bookable public barbecue facility there.

As we headed back towards the hotel, we passed the Cairns Night Markets,

so we popped in for a look around. It’s popular and very colourful, with all sorts of stalls set up,

and the inevitable food court.

We even found a stall that could sell Jane a new hat!

This passed the time agreeably until we could go to our dinner restaurant, which was called Dundee’s at the Aquarium, and which was really quite busy.

You can see that there’s part of the Cairns Aquarium on display; you can buy tickets to go into the aquarium proper, but we contented ourselves with just dinner and gawping at the fish. It’s rather like watching a fire – something that is quite hypnotic and endlessly watchable. The food at the restaurant was very good. One of the items on the menu was Crocodile Spring Rolls, so I can say that I’ve had Crocodile at Dundee’s.

We had just the one night at the hotel, which has an attractive atrium

and some nice artwork

by Wayne “Liwingu” McGinness. It also has a very large pool area outside which makes it a very family-friendly hotel, something that impinged on us particularly at breakfast time this morning as there were many, many families there, with many, many kids, not all of whom were sitting quietly and eating their cornflakes.

And now it really is time to go home – a process that takes some 30 hours.  The route is Cairns – Brisbane – Singapore – London; all of the flights are with Singapore Airlines, but the first leg was a code share with Virgin Australia, which made us wonder if we would have to retrieve our bags at Brisbane and take them across to the international terminal there. We were delighted that Virgin were able to check the bags right through to London.  The transfer between terminals at Brisbane enabled us to have one final glimpse of the city’s skyline

before we were sucked into the vortex of airport terminals and aeroplanes that we hope will spit us (and our bags) out at Heathrow.

As I write this, we’re currently sitting in Singapore airport awaiting our final flight, with heads full of all the things we’ve seen and done, fond memories of all the friends we’ve met and laughed with and mixed feelings about going home to a cold, wet and dark Britain. It would be great to stay on and enjoy the warmth of the weather and the people; but equally two months is a long time to be away, and it will be nice to be home, despite the weather. We’ve covered quite a lot of this huge place and many people have asked us what has been our favourite bit of our travels.

The answer? All of it.