Kuranda Rainforest

The other thing I really wanted to do in Cairns is see the rainforest.  Their city's motto is "where the reef meets the rainforest", so I wanted to make sure we paid a visit to each one.  There is a trip you can do from Cairns to the village of Kuranda traveling through the rainforest.  There are 2 ways to get there, either by cable cars or a historic train.  (You can also drive on the roads, but that didn't sound as much fun as the other 2 ways.)  We decided to do one each way.  I also opted to add a visit to the Tjupukai Aboriginal Cultural Park so we could learn more about the people who used to live in Australia.  We started at the cultural park.  I was a little nervous about the experience.  A shuttle bus picked us up at our hotel to take us to the station to start our journey.  There were at least 30 other people on the bus (all Chinese) and no one else had booked the cultural park.  When we went in to pick up our tickets for the day, the worker looked at the kids and asked if I wanted to change anything about our itinerary.  However, we ended up really enjoying the cultural park.  Our biggest regret was we didn't have more time there.

We started our trip to cultural park by watching a performance explaining the history and beliefs of the Tjupukai people.  After the performance, the performers explained that this was the story of their tribe, each tribe in Australia would have its own back story and set of beliefs.  Then we went outside where some workers were burying packets of meat and vegetables in hot coals.  They explained this act is something that would have been done for special occasions, similar to roasting a pig in the ground in Hawaii.  They serve the meat as part of the daily lunch buffet.  We were disappointed we had to leave before that and didn't get to sample any.  Then we watched an interactive music and dance performance.  Finally, we finished the experience with demonstrations of how to play a didgeridoo, examples of their weapons, natural medicines, and how to throw a boomerang.    

Tjupukai Aboriginals acting out their history

Burying meat and vegetables (now they use foil, traditionally they would have used banana leaves)

Charlotte and Tommy with 2 of the performers

Playing a didgeridoo

After we left the cultural park, we got on the cable car.  It gave us a good aerial view of the rainforest.  There were 2 stops to see parts of the rainforest up close.  The first stop told us more about some of the features, plants and animals of the rainforest, the second stop was to see the Barron Falls, a nearby waterfall.

On the cable car

Finally, we reached the village of Kuranda.  I don't know if there were other, more rural, parts of the village we didn't see, but it seemed like the village's main purpose was for tourists.  They had many shops and restaurants for visitors.  We found a restaurant for lunch.  I had an emu burger and Tom had a crocodile burger.  We thought both were okay, very similar to ground turkey or chicken.  They didn't have a whole lot of flavor.  We did a little shopping and headed to the train station to take the train back.

Emu burger

The Kuranda railway was an old fashioned train that took us through the rainforest on our way back to Cairns.  The route was very scenic, it stopped briefly for a good view of the Barron Falls (much better view than from the cable car).  We went through 15 tunnels.  There were pictures on the inside of the train chronicling the construction of the railway.  It was an amazing engineering feat, the entire line was built with hand tools from 1886 to 1891.  Some of the tunnels were quite long.  I can't even imagine digging them out by hand.  Overall, it was a relaxing way to get home after a long day. 

Ready to board the Kuranda Scenic Railway

Barron Falls