Thursday:


CAIRNS BOTANICAL GARDENS: explore and learn about tropical plant flora and horticulture .


Located in the Australian rainforest Queensland. The unique garden interpretive center was the recipient of the 2012 Eddie Oribin Award for Building of the Year.


Garden is also the location of Tanks Arts Centre a contemporary arts venue, hosting music, performance, theatre and visual art.


Tanks is a historical artifact as the site literally is comprised of three concrete fuel tanks, completed in 1944 for the Royal Australian Navy, decommissioned in 1987 and re-modelled into an arts centre.


Australia's Gondwanan Heritage Garden is a component of the Botanic Garden that is dedicated to growing specimens of a number of key periods demonstrating the evolution of plants from the most basic algae to modern flowering plants. We walked through cycads, tree ferns and early seed bearing trees that are direct descendants or remain largely unchanged since the dinosaur era - literally a garden of living fossils . This array of plants, still thriving today, is a major reason that the the wet tropics rainforest in this area qualified as a World Heritage Site.


Australia is also home to some of the oldest types of life on earth, the mound-building stromatolites a primitive single celled lifeform that originated over 3.5 billion years ago. The microscopic life forms can be found in two locations occupying the inter-tidal shoreline and actively building more mounds today.



Friday:


A quiet day, headed into the nearest small Village Kuranda -about the population of Galiano.


Called bohemian it is reminiscent of Vancouver's 4th Avenue in the 60s and 70s. Lots of artisans and flora/fauna interpretive sites. Tourists flock here each day for a few brief hours. Much fun to sip a coffee (delicious) and people watch. Kuranda Village is also the terminus of the skyrail (cable car) and or train. I look forward to travelling these as they were specifically set up to allow viewing and enjoying the rainforest with minimal impact.


Ed had a restaurant of choice all planned out, Frogs. No they didn't serve frog but Ed did enjoy a sampler of kangaroo, crocodile and emu done on skewers and served with dipping sauces made of local ingredients such as wild lime. A water dragon joined him in hopes a few morsels would fall its way (the water dragon was not on the menu!). Crocodile is a white meat taken from the tail, and although somewhat muscular, does taste like chicken! Given all the signage warning of the dangers of salt water crocs, I was pleased to be the one doing the eating.


Stickeybeaked through the many shops. What an array of stuff! We'll be back.