Table Of Contents
(As I write this, 0 of these pictures are on my gallery; it’ll be a while. EDIT: I put up July 21st: WLG-MEL and dingoes and July 27: Abbreviated final day in Melbourne.)
We had planned to be in Melbourne in March 2020, but for obvious reasons, that didn’t happen. Four years later we finally managed to get to Melbourne for a bit. I bought a ticket including 2 weekends, and then decided to go to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef during the week from Melbourne. So, in the end, it was a Saturday/Sunday in Melbourne, then off to Cairns, back the next Saturday, and then back to Wellington on Sunday.
Melbourne Round 1: Eltham version
The problem with the 6am international flights from Wellington to Melbourne is that your options to get to WLG are either taxi (Uber) or bicycle, and I’d rather not leave my bike there for 10 days. Air NZ is now offering (unfortunately only 1×) daily service to Melbourne. (Something about a lack of planes.)
The advantage of leaving Wellington at 6am is that one gets into Melbourne at 8am local time. Hopefully with some sleep on the way over. Though the WLG Air NZ international lounge’s breakfast is disappointing and the food you get onboard with a theworks fare is generally (but not always) better, worth interrupting sleep for.
We were planning on going for a hike in the Cathedral Ranges, but the weather was actually uncomfortably chilly and windy. Pretty hostile overall, and not the weather that we’d brought clothes for.
Instead, we went to the Dingo Sanctuary near where we thought about hiking, and did go for a walk at the Long Forest Nature Conservation Reserve, though didn’t see many birds there at all. Between the sanctuary and the walk, I looked for food, and it turns out that the options were pretty much all at the mall, as I discovered upon arrival. The noodle soup at Dumpling Alley in Woodgrove Shopping Centre was good, though maybe not the famous Melbourne food I was hoping for.
Alex had invited us to stay over with him in Eltham when we had last visited Melbourne for our one-day stopover on our way to Hobart in May, and I took him up on his offer this time. We got up early on Sunday to head to Sherbrooke Forest, which contains Grant’s Picnic Ground and the Lyrebird Walk. After walking for a while we did manage to see a superb lyrebird—as Alex put it, when you give up hope, then the lyrebird appears. It wasn’t in full display, so I was like “is that really a lyrebird?”, but it definitely was. And then, except for the lyrebird and the galah, there were tons of birds just at the parking lot (where they used to feed birds).
Melbourne ↔ Cairns Travel
There are no Star Alliance carriers in the domestic Australian market. The (non-regional) choices are Qantas, Virgin Australia, and Jetstar. I think sometimes there are travel benefits for Air NZ status holders on Qantas, but not for Star Alliance. This is also an issue for my flights back to Canada via Australia: if the first flight is on Qantas, I don’t get extra luggage.
I am willing to pay more for flights if there are status-related benefits. Jetstar flights give me nothing, so I tried to minimize costs, and paid A$364 per person for the MEL-CNS roundtrip. At that price, we could bring at most 7kg of luggage.
Another way of organizing our trip would have been a triangle WLG-MEL, MEL-CNS, and CNS-AKL-WLG, but I had booked MEL first and then embedded the MEL-CNS roundtrip inside it. The triangle would have gotten me more status benefits.
Anyway, it turns out that both our Cairns outbound and inbound flights were delayed. The outbound flight took a 1hr delay, which was actually good, because we could return the car and eat at Karachi Street Food. I would go there again, but I wouldn’t order the Beef Haleem again: it was a bit too much like purée, though the flavour wasn’t bad. Portion sizes were gigantic, and we took the tasty biryani with us, but I thought they’d consider beef haleem a liquid. Maybe not if mixed with the rice.
We did not get our luggage weighed for MEL-CNS (the woman with the scale didn’t think we looked like we had heavy luggage). At CNS, Uber would have been more expensive than the taxi, and there weren’t any, anyway. We waited for 10 minutes for the taxi in a medium-long line. Walking from CNS is kind of sketchy, since there’s no sidewalk, and it was dark when we arrived. Also, rumours of crocodiles.
Let’s break the sequence and talk about the return while we’re at it. I had planned to be back in Melbourne at 10am Saturday after an early flight CNS-MEL. But JetStar texted me on Friday evening to tell me that that flight was delayed from a 0700 departure to a 1525 departure, which was significantly less attractive. I could’ve spent the day in Cairns, but preferred Melbourne. Earlier flights were full, so the best I could do was a 1stop via Sydney, arriving at MEL at 1345. At least we’d get some of an afternoon in Melbourne.
Thanks for nothing, Jetstar.
There was no luggage weight check at CNS (I looked for scales and didn’t see any), but they sent everyone through luggage weighing for SYD-MEL; I hid my camera under my jacket. (We arrived in Sydney early enough to take an earlier connecting flight, but Jetstar won’t let you do that. Also, I reported an eBird list including a myna from inside the terminal.)
Cairns
The main point of going to Cairns was to see the famous Great Barrier Reef. I booked one night on a liveaboard. But then I found several other things to do around Cairns, e.g. the Wet Tropics UNESCO site. I heard that Daintree was also great, but I thought it was too far for the time we had.
On our first day in Cairns, we went for a walk at the Botanic Gardens and saw a couple of birds, though actually more birds on the way there. Plus there was a yellow-headed bird in the trees that I couldn’t quite photograph. Lunch at Ozmosis (beef burger, salad) was really good. Then it was off to the Esplanade, which served as our path to Central Cairns and where I was to pick up the rental underwater camera. Dinner at Viet Fresh Noodles was fine.
We stayed in a cabin at the NRMA Cairns Holiday Park. The cabin was good. MP complained about the cleanliness of the toliets near the cabin. They are cleaned daily but sometimes people are messy. The holiday park really isn’t that close to anything. It’s a 15 minute walk from restaurants, the Botanic Garden, and the Esplanade. Maybe I would have liked something more central, come to think of it. We were next to some French from France on the first night, and then when we came back, we were next to some girls from Alberta who had just graduated from Queen’s in Kingston.
Great Barrier Reef
We got picked up by a Divers Den shuttle driver playing ABBA and taken to the small boat (Aqua Quest) which does day trips out to the Great Barrier Reef. We did two snorkels off that boat, and then transferred to the big boat (Ocean Quest), where there was 1 more snorkel on the first day and 2 in the morning on the second day. One could also dive, if one was certified. That’s a lot of water activity.
Here’s my hot takes on the Great Barrier Reef. I suspect it’s a place that is better for diving than snorkelling. The reef at Aitutaki was far more colourful (bleaching?) and calmer. Here, it was somewhat like a washing machine when we were out; so much so that MP skipped some of the snorkels. I did swallow rather more salt water than I would have liked, though maybe I got a bit better at snorkelling towards the end.
We did go out more in the water on this trip than on our Aitutaki trip, though that wasn’t a trip with divers.
When I was renting the camera (Olympus TG7) the staff at the rental place suggested a GoPro, but I really don’t like video. Probably also the photography is better when diving, but oh well. You can decide what you think of my pictures.
The Aqua Quest day boat is kind of a high turnover operation. They assigned us safety numbers (presumably so that they don’t leave anyone behind in the water) and tracked us using those numbers. On Ocean Quest (which also had better food) the turnover was lower and they tracked us by name.
Back to Cairns
We still had 2 more days in Cairns after getting back from the boat. One would be at Kuranda and the other at the Atherton Highlands.
Kuranda Village
This village, not actually very far from Cairns (30km/40 minutes by car), is really popular with Japanese tourists, including groups of high school students. MP thinks it’s because it seems to be sort of a nature activity (but not really).
But first, we took an Uber to the Cattana Wetlands, which was peaceful, but mostly devoid of birds at that time: one Australasian darter, one green pygmy-goose, and two orange-footed megapodes. Lots of bitey insects though!
Then we took the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway; despite containing the word “rail” it is a tourist cable car up to Kuranda with two stops: one at Red Peak (with a little tourist walk in the Wet Tropics of Queensland UNESCO World Heritage Site) and one at Barron Falls (not at peak flow). Definitely touristy, but we went at the very beginning of the day, so it wasn’t too crowded yet.
The cableway terminates in Kuranda Village, which is sort of a hippie village in the rainforest with lots of touristy shops and eateries. The two eateries we went to were really good. Phở Corner Kuranda had an excellent banh mi (fillings were great, though the texture was not as good as the place in Winnipeg). Hayabusa of Kuranda Japanese Lunch/Sweets & Kimono shop had excellent curry noodle with tofu.
We also went to Birdworld Kuranda, which is an aviary with lots of exotic birds (especially parrots) just hanging around and photographable. Won’t add them to my life list though. Doesn’t quite seem right.
We then walked to the other side of Barron Falls. The train does stop here for 5 minutes, but that’s actually not long enough to go down the lookout. We had plenty of time to admire the falls on our walk, which was easy (mostly a sidewalk with not much elevation gain) but still a 8.7km walk. Anyway, a nice walk in the forest!
After we got back to the village we then went to Hayabusa, mentioned above, and then got back to the train station in plenty of time for our trip on the Kuranda Scenic Railway (which is indeed a train).
It started raining heavily before our train was due to depart, so we hopped on board and waited for it to leave. The train goes through rugged terrain. Building it was quite a feat for the 19th century, mostly by hand. Booking it still feels being in the 20th century: I had to call (OK, by cellphone from the Uber) to book, and then picked up and paid for the tickets at the station. The equipment is also retro. Gold Class (which we weren’t in) seems to basically have sofas as seats. The train also takes 90 minutes to cover the 30km, but it does a lot of switchbacks. Anyway, I like scenic railroads, and here we were, so I enjoyed it. It is a legit train that transports you between point A and point B, though of course tourist-focussed.
There was a young family also on the train with us. The dad was almost entirely asleep and the mom dealt with kid management, including some sort of crisis.
Yama Zaru was an izakaya with good eggplant and, that night, no sushi fridge and hence no sushi. I talked to the guy (owner?) about Canada, which he was familiar with for some reason.
Atherton Highlands
There were a lot of stops here! The notes in my book are over half a page.
I went (on foot) and picked up a car rental at Mini Car Rentals for the day, and then went back to the holiday park to pick up MP.
Up a twisty road to the highlands and then a quick stop at the Lake Barrine teahouse (“Where the Rainforest Meets the Lake”), with a pair of Australasian grebes in the water and no waterskiing for me. MP fully approved of the scone with clotted cream and jam.
The Platypus Viewing Platform in Yungaburra was but 10km away. There were lots of tourists coming in on two minibuses, but no platypus. Some birds at Allumbah Pocket.
Then we had surprisingly good food (Penang Beef for me) in Atherton. It’s kind of a little town in the middle of the highlands.
Onwards to the Mount Hypipamee Crater which is a large water-filled crater. Hard to get a creative shot there. Maybe if you’re allowed to use a drone.
Wongabel State Forest is supposed to be good for birds in a rare native mabi forest, but we didn’t see many (a recurring theme).
We came back through Kuranda again (Kuranda to Cairns much faster by car), avoiding the twisties, and made a quick stop at Cattana, where I got a good view of an orange-footed megapode.
MP thought we should eat in downtown Cairns on a Friday night. Cairns is extremely car-choked and lacks good foodpaths. Boo! (Also, entering the mall which is right in the middle of the city is hard: there is really only one pedestrian entrance from the street, and there is no other street activation, just walls surrounding the garage. There’s also the entrance through the parking garage, but who wants that?)
Anyway, parking was stressful, since many people were downtown. Lots of restaurants were busy, but The MED was empty, and had, again, really good food. Melbourne is famous for food, but we did have many great meals in Cairns.
We stopped at the grocery store on our way out. There was a PA announcement repeated several times, with increasing desperation: “Could the owner of the dog in lane 3 please move your dog?'
I drove MP to the holiday park, returned the car (cheap-to-run manual car got 5.16L/100km for our 245km; gas only cost A$22.65), and again walked back to the holiday park. Made for 9.7km of walking in all.
Melbourne Round 2: abbreviated final day
Despite having less time in Melbourne than hoped, we did manage to meet up with Hanna from the Overland Track for some desserts at Bing Chillin (matcha crown croissant) and then some last-minute gear shopping at Bogong (MP got mountaineering boots and I got new climbing shoes, on sale!). There is more choice in gear in Melbourne for sure.
After being the last to leave Bogong, we walked over to Snow Monkey Ramen, which has a number of unique takes on ramen. I had the lobster bisque ramen, which definitely was a lot like a bisque. I’d have it again.
Then there was a walk through the lively streets of Melbourne back to our hotel, and out early the next morning. The SkyBus (somehow there is no train) was 20 minutes on Sunday morning and like 40 minutes on Saturday afternoon. We changed our AKL-WLG flight and got back to Wellington in the early afternoon.