Skyrail - what a view!

Today we put the car in for a service then got a taxi to the Skyrail terminal. We just beat a busload of Asian tourists onto the gondolas at 9.30am but they caught up with us at the first stop where you get off for a look at the forest with the option of a Ranger guided tour. The tour is worth doing because the Ranger explains a lot about the plants in a rainforest such as this and their fight for available light. It’s also good to know which plants are dangerous when you plan on spending a bit of time exploring the rainforest up here. There are the kauri pines, huge Superb Palms, Staghorn Ferns, Basket Ferns and other epiphytes on the trees, Strangler Figs that eventually cover the tree and kill it with their huge aerial roots and also some dangerous plants. For instance there is the Lawyer vine or Wait-a-while that has very nasty hooks that can make a nasty mess of you if you get caught on them. The Ranger told us a friend of his got caught on the face while riding his mountain bike and ended up in hospital having several stitches. There is also one which I can’t remember the name of with heart shaped leaves that have tiny spines which go one way but if you get them into your skin they cause a nasty, painful reaction that recurs for months or years when it contacts water. The aborigines know how to harvest the berries without getting stung by the leaves of course. The views as you can imagine are spectacular from the gondola and I didn’t get nervous or worried about falling until we were over the water and I wanted to take a photo of the other side but it seemed that we were leaning more that way and I just couldn’t bring myself to go over there. I felt like I would cause the gondola to rock and fall. Well, it’s very high!! At the second stop there are spectacular views of Barron Gorge and Barron Falls where the river drops 280 metres to the coastal plains and we saw the train on its way up the mountain also.
When we got to Kuranda we took a walk along the main street and checked out the cafes for lunch. We settled on one, had lunch including a refreshing orange, mango and pineapple juice for me and a mango smoothy for Fin and then headed to Birdworld. We went to the Butterfly Sanctuary last time we were in Kuranda so decided to check out Birdworld on Fin’s cousin, Sharyn’s recommendations. Birdworld was great! It was much better than the flight aviary we went to in Childers. The birds were very used to people and photo opportunities were everywhere! There were both native and exotic species there so we got up close and personal with South American Macaws as well as Red-tailed Black Cockatoos. They were all magnificently colured and marked birds and the time went very quickly in there. We had to be at the train station by 1.45pm to catch the train back to Freshwater Station since the trip back was leaving Kuranda at 2pm and supposed to take 1-1/2 hours. This would give us plenty of time to catch a taxi back to Subaru to pick up the car. Apart from a taxi being difficult to get, we got back without any drama and were thrilled to see not only was the car serviced but the several kilos of mud had been washed off it and it had also been vacuumed! So, our nice clean, serviced car is ready to go to Daintree tomorrow.