A word about Cairns

Public swimming pool close to the shore in Cairns

When you fly up to  see The Great Barrier Reef, most often you fly to Cairns; pronounced without the "r". . . sort of like Cans, but with a more complex "a". Anyway, this is not the place I remember from 25 years ago at all. It makes me wonder if I really came here at all. It's now has 250,000 citizens, and is a major tourist destination. The airport is fairly big. . . close to the size of Boise's. The aboriginal population is also more visible. . .10% of the population is of aboriginal descent.

Mud flats at low tide in Cairns

Mud Crabs. Yum.

The town and port is full of tourista stuff. Not my favorite. But like many places in Australia, I am struck. . .even amazed. . .at the city's investment in it's people. This isn't the greatest view, but it's the very end of a HUGE public swimming area. No fee. You just walk through a heavily tree'd park with your suit, towel, picnic basket, and go swimming. It's on the beach, but separate from the sea, so you don't have to worry about any pesky jelly fish; called "stingers" here.

And speaking of critters, there was a large mud-flat area when we were walking along the seaside boardwalk at low tide. The place was covered with these medium-sized crabs, and "mud crabs" appeared on a lot of local menus. I love crab meat, but wasn't up to doing the picking, so I passed. John, of course, is allergic to shellfish, so he wasn't so bold either.

We were actually surprise that the local gulls weren't picking these guys off. There were so many crabs. .  . the flats were covered with them scooting about. We figure the gulls must have had easier and/or tastier prey.

Our snorkeling trip to the Great Barrier Reef left from the terminal in Cairns. So did a ton of other ones (most much larger vessels, and more people than ours); and Cairns is also a stop for cruise ships. Oh the Humanity. So many people.
More on the trip to the Great Barrier Reef in the next post. . . .