Australia Kuranda

Ultimate Kuranda: April 27, 2003

Today was a great day! We finally got to see Kangaroos, Koala Bears, and throw boomerangs. It was all through a tour by Tropic Wings called Ultimate Kuranda. They picked us up from our hotel at 7:40am and took us straight to the Cairns Railway Station. Here we were split in groups depending on what tour we had purchased and were given our itinerary for the day. We got on the Kuranda Scenic Railway and took a 1 3/4 hour trip to Kuranda through beautiful scenery and rainforests. We passed mountains, waterfalls, rivers and made one stop halfway through the trip at Stoney Creek near the Barron Waterfalls. Once we got to Kuranda we had an hour to walk around and do whatever we pleased. There were shops, restaurants, and markets. We found Sarah a Kuranda fleece jacket and Joey a T-shirt.
Then we took a bus to the RainforestStation for lunch. After lunch we had a few minutes before our tours started so we walked down to a lake near the restaurant... and we saw kangaroos!!! They were in the zoo part of the park so we couldn't get that close but there were Kangaroos and Wallabies all over the place. Our first activity was an Army Duck Tour through the rainforest and then on a small lake. The Army Duck was able to drive on both land and water. We saw several water dragons, a big garden spider, and a turtle who swam right up to our boat.
The next activity was a show put on by several Aborigine Dancers. They danced to music played with two Didgeridoos and all of there songs told a story of their history. After the show they took us to a big field to teach us how to throw spears and boomerangs and learn to play the didgeridoo. We each got one attempt at throwing the boomerang. It is harder than it looks because even the Aborigines didn't always get it to come back to them.
Then one of my favorite parts of the day... we got our picture taken with a koala bear named Buddy. We went at a perfect time of the day because there was no line - so they let me hold him a little longer than normal and they also let me take a couple of my own pictures. Buddy slept in my arms the whole time I held him and they told me that's sign that he was content and not afraid. Next we took a tour of the animal park where we saw kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, koalas, cassowaries, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and a dingo (although we didn't get to see the dingo up close). We got to walk right up to the kangaroos and wallabies and fed them by hand. They were very tame and let you pet them all you wanted.
The last activity was a ride on the skyrail from Kuranda back down to Cairns. We made two stops along the way - the first at Barron Falls Station where we had a great view of the falls and the second at Red Peak Station. It was a beautiful ride - you could see for miles and look down onto the rainforests below. We got back to our hotel around 5:45, got cleaned up and went out for a while. We ended up finding a live band playing in an outside courtyard so we sat down and listened for a while. They were playing all songs we knew.