The Wildlife Dome in Cairns, Australia

How many of you know what a bandicoot, frogmouth, or wallaby is? They’re all animals native to Australia and I got to see some when I went to the Cairns Wildlife Dome on top of a hotel and casino in Cairns, Australia last time I was there. The Dome is a mini-zoo with galahs and other birds flying around our heads and habitats for other animals that we could walk through. It’s a bad picture but as you can see I also got to hold a koala (which has bristly fur instead of the soft teddy bear fur most stuffed recreations have) and I got to see some kookaburras, a bettong, and a few sleeping wallabies (which look like small kangaroos when awake). Here is more on the animals at the Dome and here are more pictures I took in the Dome. I hope you enjoy the pictures and I highly recommend a stop at the Dome if you get to go near Cairns, Australia.

My Kuranda Trip

Kuranda is a tourist town in the Tablelands of Northern Queensland in Australia. I recently rode the Kuranda Scenic Railway up the Atherton Tableland, which seemed like a mountain but was really a high and rocky plateau. One of the greatest engineering feats of Australia, the railway was finished in 1891 and is now used entirely for sightseeing thanks to the road that was built to allow cars and buses to ferry people up. The two hour train ride was in an old fashioned train wide enough for a wooden bench that seated four people and a thin aisle to walk up. It stopped at a few places with great views and allowed us to get out and stretch our legs, get pictures, or read the information provided. After a gorgeous ride, we got to the town of Kuranda. If you like to get shop at expensive boutiques for one of a kind items or if you like browsing and bargaining at craft fairs, Kuranda is a great place to visit. If you aren’t in the mood to shop, try some of the wild life areas nearby. If none of those appeal to you, umm…, the food is really good. It was near the end of the trip so my friend and I didn’t have much money left to buy a lot but as we didn’t have much time before we had to get on the SkyRail and go back down the Tableland, we stopped at a deli for an amazing lunch and wandered the craft market areas. I bought a few beads and found a stall that sold wines made from mangos, not grapes. About two o’clock we got on the SkyRail to fly us down to the station the bus would pick us up at. We stopped at a few stations to get pictures of the rainforest plants and I even saw a peacock that nicely posed for my camera but eventually we got to the bottom of the tableland and went back to our hotel, one more trip done.

However, the next day we were planning to go to The Dome, a mini-zoo above the casino in downtown Cairns, and hold a koala as well as get lots of pictures. See you next week for that post. Click here to view photos I took on my trip.

Carnes, Australia

Cairns, Australia is a lovely tourist town not far from the Great Barrier Reef and a number of other attractions. Named Trinity Bay by James Cook, it started out as a port for the discovery of gold not far away but that function was taken away when a quicker route to Port Douglas was discovered and it became an agricultural port. In World War II Carnes became a port for both Australian and Allied Forces and combat missions were sent out from Carnes to support the Battle of the Coral Sea. After the War it became the tourist town it is today.
Not far from an international airport, Carnes is full of seafood restaurants, Asian restaurants, souvenir shops, and tour agents as well as being surrounded by hotels and resorts. I had a lot of fun in this laid back town and took a trip up to Karianda, which I’ll talk about next week. I also watched a magic show at the casino, where I couldn’t take pictures, and visited the mini-zoo on top of the casino, where I took a lot of pictures I’ll show you in two weeks.
If you’re interested in what else you can do while in this charming beach town, here is the link to their tourist site. If you plan to go down to Australia, I highly recommend planning a few days in this relaxed tourist hub.