Cairns Travel Guide

As you can imagine, there are a number of competing companies eager to take you out to the Barrier Reef, and the choice you make is ultimately based on how much you wish to pay and whether you are expecting to relax or have a deep sea adventure. I had been eager for some time to go SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef - one of those things people are keen to tell you to do before you die - so I chose a company called Great Adventures which had come highly recommended. It seems that, while some other companies will just take eager new divers out on a boat and encourage them to sit on the edge of a platform at the back and roll off - which in my mind requires a certain degree of guts - Great Adventures actually has their own pontoon set up for people more interested in the experience than the daring! Our boat left Cairns at 8.30 this morning and headed out to Green Island, another of the multitude of National Parks off the coast of Northern Queensland. Whereas some companies specialise in taking everyone straight out into the middle of the reef, kitting them out with diving equipment and chucking them over the side, Great Adventures goes for an all-round approach and base themselves from a sort of self-contained entertainment resort and spa off the coast. Once on Green Island, we had two hours to enjoy the facilities - these included a perfect white sandy beach for sunbathing, two large oceanside swimming pools where old ladies seemed to be doing aerobics in the shallow end, a rainforest walk and a marine park which I could wander around at my leisure whilst keeping a careful eye on the Crocodiles. There were also bars and cafes and plenty to keep people amused should they decide to stay on the island and not go on to the reef later in the day. Those of us who had been looking forward to the opportunity to SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef for some time were provided with a long questionnaire to fill out before arriving on the island. This wanted to know complete details of my medical history, whether I thought I might be pregnant, if there was any history of insanity in the family and generally whether there was any chance of me suddenly pulling my mask off underwater or eating the fish. I found this questionnaire only slightly less patronising than the one they give you on planes that wants to know if you intend to commit any acts of terrorism whilst in the country, but I patiently ticked all the "No" boxes nonetheless and everything was fine. After arrival on Green Island and while everybody else was relaxing by the pool, us divers in training were given a complete briefing which involved a one-on-one talk with an instructor to make absolutely sure I wasn't a raving lunatic, a question and answer session to make sure it had all sunk in, and half an hour of diving in the pool wearing an oxygen mask and sounding like Darth Vader. At times it felt as though I was back at school doing a test, but I kept my cool and told myself that the end result would be something I'd be able to tell my kids about in years to come - especially as Great Adventures provides a video of the dive which I can force them to watch again and again! After the briefing, there was a cooling off period where it was suggested we walk around and make absolutely sure in our heads that SCUBA diving was for us - no doubt some people are put off slightly by the revelation that holding your breath while wearing the SCUBA equipment is likely to collapse your lungs or cause an embolism, as does coming up or going down too quickly and seemingly many other things. I told myself that I was going to do this dive whatever happened, and if I was actually alive at the end of it then that would just be a bonus. Great Adventures have a pontoon permanently moored in the middle of the reef and after getting back on the boat at mid-day, it took us about an hour to get to it. The options once there didn't seem to be any narrower than on Green Island - there was a sunbathing deck, steps into the water for snorkelling, a platform from which we would be starting our dive later, a miniature submarine on which we could explore the reef in comfort, and a landing pad for the helicopter which will show you the reef from the air. Those who went snorkelling were warned to stay close to the pontoon and to look up occasionally and wave - it appears that there is a real problem with older visitors going out to snorkel, laying down in the water and then turning out to be dead when the time comes for them to come in! Needless to say, many of the activities are optional extras for which large wallets are required. My main criticism of the day, though, was the fact that there just wasn't enough time - even though it would cost an arm and a leg, you really need to do two separate day trips to the reef to enjoy everything they have on offer. Because of the times at which the submarine and helicopter were scheduled to go, there was simply no way of going SCUBA diving and still taking part in either of these activities, which frankly was something of a large disappointment and meant that my only option was to roast on the sundeck until the instructor called us for the dive. I looked particularly strange kitted out in my wet suit, snorkel, fins and breathing tank. The wetsuit took forever to get on and refused to zip up, and the tank weighed an absolute ton - but I was assured that as soon as we were in the water the weight would simply disappear. There was a cameraman going on the dive with us to film for those of us who had paid extra for a video, and he took great pleasure in capturing many extended scenes of us waddling around on the pontoon balancing on one foot and trying to get our equipment on - this reminded me somewhat of the cameramen on BBC nature documentaries who stand happily by and watch cute little fluffy tiger cubs being torn to shreds by crocodiles in the name of watchable television without actually thinking to wade in and do anything to help. At various points, usually just when I was about to fall over or topple off the side of the pontoon on one leg, the cameraman would suddenly appear out of nowhere and stick a microphone in my face, presumably expecting some sort of spontaneous and witty comment - I usually told him to spontaneously and wittily stick his mic where the sun don't shine! I had also had the foresight to bring along a disposable underwater camera too, so between us there was no way I wasn't coming away with something to remember the experience by. Finally, our instructor helped me to my feet with what felt like a ton of bricks strapped to my back, and I tottered unsteadily over to the diving platform where steps led down into the water. Lowering myself into the water holding onto a safety line, it really did feel as though the weight had been lifted from my back - the tank, being full of air, wanted to float and so I found myself quite buoyant. During our briefing on Green Island, we had been taught various hand signals to be used underwater and the instructor ran through them once more before we finally dipped our heads under, linked arms and kicked off towards the reef. Every now and then, our guide would swim around in front of us and indicate that he wanted to know if we were alright, which got slightly irritating as we were far more interested in gaping at the multicoloured fish all around - it was also very confusing as the thumbs-up hand gesture generally used in everyday life to indicate "I'm fine" actually means "Help me, I'm drowning. Please pull me quickly up to the surface. Not too quickly though, as I don't want an embolism either" when SCUBA diving! We were expected to check our oxygen meter regularly and also had a depth indicator as we had been told to hold our noses and blow hard to prevent ear pain every ten metres further down we went. We were also instructed that we could clear any water out of our masks by pulling them slightly away from our faces and pressing a purge button - but if they seriously thought I was going to even consider taking my mask off underwater, even just a little bit, they obviously didn't know me very well! I'm not sure how deep we actually got to, but I didn't experience any problems with my ears and probably would've been far more interested in what I was seeing to notice even if I had. To the fish, we were clearly just other big fish. As soon as we headed for the seabed, we were immediately surrounded by multicoloured sea creatures of every description, some of which didn't look remotely like anything I've seen in my life. They weaved in and out of my legs, flicked past my nose, came up and had a good look through my goggles to see if there was anything interesting in there. Every piece of coral we passed was filled with brightly coloured fish, darting in and out and occasionally poking one eye out as we passed to make sure we weren't a shark. One fish, affectionately known as Wally the Wrasse, is probably the size of two average people and is so curious of these strange two legged creatures exploring his domain that he follows everyone around and has the fish equivalent of a good sniff until he gets bored. Of course, you're not allowed to just go around touching fish and running your hands all over the reef as this is a protected environment and it's just these sorts of things which will erode it away to nothing - but there are places where the guides will allow the group to settle onto the seabed and feel a particular well-stroked piece of coral. The fish, of course, are quite difficult not to touch as there's so many of them it's difficult not to brush several of them as you swim. One thing nobody tells you about, and you don't expect, is the sudden rush of noise when you surface. For half an hour, you've been underwater in almost total silence with water in your ears clogging up your hearing anyway - when you suddenly get your head above water again in the middle of a group of a hundred people having fun and shouting and asking how it was, it's as though somebody has stuck a trombone in your ear and is playing Waltzing Mathilda very loudly. The cameraman was better behaved underwater, getting us together in groups for photos and swimming around looking for good angles. The end result is a video which looks very professionally put together - it begins with a really long advert for the company, but since that advert consists of some of the best underwater reef footage they've collected over the years this isn't really something to be bothered about. The second half of the video covers our dive, including some of the more embarrassing comments made while we were all being interviewed beforehand (cough) and the whole of our dive experience from start to finish - most holiday videos are something you watch once and then put away to show the grandkids one day if they've done something to upset you, but this is a film I'm likely to want to watch again and again.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Thumbing through the brochures in the hotel after arriving at Cairns this morning, I decided against all the laws of probability that a fantastic way to end the year (and possibly my life) would be to go White Water Rafting. I'm slightly impetuous like this - Show me a brochure or guide book full of things to do next week and my brain has time to reel in horror and say "Are you Mad?", but present me with the same crazy opportunity and explain that it absolutely must be done right now and sometimes I just can't help myself. I'm absolutely convinced I'm not the only one who recognises this phenomenon in myself, either, as, when I was younger, some of my friend's did seem to have the uncanny ability to come across a lot of things that weren't going to be around the next day. And so it was that I came to be sitting in the reception of the hotel at eleven o'clock this morning, shortly after arriving, waiting for a five hour nail-biting ride along the Tully River with 5 other nuts in a small piece of orange rubber that I wouldn't trust to use as a backpack. These were going to be grade four rapids, I should add for those who know what I'm talking about - none of those grade 3 woosey rapids for grannies and small children. There was a page in the brochure which explained the different grades on offer - Grade three, it said, was ideal for beginners and grade four was only for those who seriously wanted to get wet. If I had to think about this for a moment, the offer of a video as a keepsake for those brave enough to try the fourth grade made my mind up for me. If I was going to end my life being tossed to pieces on some craggy rocks, at least my friends would be able to watch my demise later. Actually, the whole experience was incredibly good fun and nowhere near as bad as a lot of us had obviously been expecting. The guides helped to give it all a bit of extra excitement by constantly saying things like "This next rapid is called Instant Death in a Pool of Blood" - but of course, the next rapid wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as it had been built up to be so there were a lot of moments of suspense followed by a sort of "oh, right" moment before the next rapid loomed up in front and we were back to the suspense again. Having said that, don't think for one moment that riding Tully River isn't exciting, frightening, and at times life-threatening. A waiver of liability had to be signed before we set off, and there is always a very good chance of getting hurt on the jagged rocks or drowned in a whirlpool going down some of the nastier rapids! Tully river is about one and a half hours drive south of Cairns, and it's rapids are graded at four on a scale of one to six - one being compared to a little ducky in the bath and six being something akin to Niagara falls. Level four is reasonably fast, strong and capable of capsizing a raft easily if instructions aren't followed to the letter. Often, the raft will get bored and decide to flip anyway and there is nothing that can be done to stop it - the occupants just get very wet and have to climb back in again as quickly as possible as there is no controlling the tide and any messing about is likely to result in the raft vanishing over the horizon without you. On the way to the Tully, the coach stopped for morning tea and we had to change into swimming costumes. At the river itself we were then supplied with helmets, lifejackets and oars, and split into eight groups of seven before being led down a narrow path through the rainforest to where our rafts were waiting. We were shown how to paddle, how to manoeuvre the raft by suddenly shifting to the left or right, and how in the direst of consequences we could all squat down in the bottom between the seats to stabilise the center of gravity and prevent us from capsizing. This, I will say now, doesn't work. We were taken through drills concerning how to rescue someone from the water, what to do if they were swept off down the rapids, how to use all sorts of safety ropes, and how to swim in order to avoid being cut to shreds by underwater rocks. "So," Phil the instructor asked, "Does anyone want to back out now?" This would have been a nice thought, if it weren't for the fact that we were already moored in the middle of the Tully at this point, seven ashen faced people wondering what we had let themselves in for but not wanting to make ourselves look foolish by asking to be taken back to the bank. We were well and truly committed. As, indeed, we should've been. We swept off down the river more or less under the hand of God, frantically paddling in and out of the rocks littering the course. After a few hundred yards we hit the first rapid, and hung on for dear life as we were propelled over the edge and through the cascading white-water to the bottom, desperately trying to keep the raft afloat. The trouble is that both steering and holding on are crucial at exactly the right moment and that the time available to get from one to the other is about a millionth of a nanosecond. This means that we had to paddle like a mad thing right up until the point when we slipped over the edge of the rapids, at which point our instructor Phil would suddenly scream "Hold On" and if everyone didn't pull the oars out of the water, point them skyward, grab the safety rope and wrap it around their hands before these words were actually out of Phil's mouth, we'd all be in the water. "That was a little one to start with" said Phil when we had spluttered and choked our way through the first rapid, "That was a level three, this next one is a level four - It's called Tourist's entrails." He said something like that, anyway. And so it went on until lunch, rapid after rapid. The whole day consists of a total of forty-seven rapids, over a fourteen kilometre stretch of the Tully. Before lunch, we only actually covered a couple of kimometres and were promised faithfully - and quite wrongly, I can assure you - that the afternoon section was a stroll in the park. We moored the rafts on the bank and found a quiet little clearing for lunch where we were supplied with sandwiches and drinks and the cameraman went around asking people what they thought of it so far and pointing the camera right up their noses as they answered. At least we had half an hour to relax, although by the end of the day, every bone in my body was aching. After lunch, things didn't get off to a good start. After somehow managing to stay in the raft all morning, we managed to flip the raft on the very first rapid and I got stuck underneath with a girl called Sophie from Perth. The being stuck in an air bubble with a pretty girl wasn't actually the problem - far from it, I could've stayed there all day - the scary thing was that at some point we both needed to actually get out and we were surrounded by a fast moving current which wanted to pull us apart and jagged rocks which wanted to rip us apart. Also, the raft was jammed under an overhang so we couldn't lift it off and were forced to swim underneath to get out. The trouble was that our lifejackets wanted to pull us upwards and we needed to swim downwards, so we were pretty much stuck there until rescued. And when I tell this story of being stuck under a raft with an Aussie Sheila, surrounded by certain death in every direction and hoping that somebody will miss us, do you know what the average Australian bloke wants to know? "Did you kiss her?" Apparently it doesn't matter if you die in these situations, as long as you score with the fit chick. The cameraman followed us along the riverbank for most of the journey, and at the end of the day we were able to purchase a copy of our exploits and also a set of colour photos. I was just glad to be able to get my aching bones back to the hotel and lay down for a few hours before going out at Midnight to see the New Year in at a fireworks display in the middle of town. There was a band, and people sitting around on chairs or dancing in the town square - to be honest, it wasn't the most exciting New Year I've ever been to and I really just wanted to fall into bed and sleep for a fortnight!You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Well I'm sorry to all you Cairns dwellers but I think that Cairns is aweful. I'd heard about it my whole life and was very disapointed. Its overly commercialised and busy with  tarffic fumes and unfreindly hotel staff. I was planning to spend more time there but I just used it as an overnight stop off on my way to and home from the Daintree because I didn't want to stay there.  Its really convenient if you want to do all the tourist trips like the Barrier Reef and stuff  but you can do all that from the Daintree which is about 2 hours drive north of there and has the most spectacular rainforest I've ever seen. My review...over developed, too touristy, lost its natural beauty and too noisy and polluted. The only good thing about it was the Cairns to Kuranda Sky Train. Go north from there, you'll love it!