Who is Online

We have 209 guests and no members online

Australasia

Cruising to PNG - Cairns & Kuranda

Details
Parent Category: Travel
Category: Australasia
Hits: 12545

Article Index

Page 7 of 11

Cairns

After a brief reconnoitre of the city it seemed to be quite familiar - perhaps after travelling.  There's something somehow familiar to Australian towns and cities - probably the people.

 

See album See album
See album See album

Cairns - it feels very Australian

After a coffee and a drink we decided to visit Kuranda by the Skyrail. Wendy had been to Kuranda before but not by Skyrail. An adventure.

 

Kuranda Skyrail

At 7.5-kilometre (4.7 mi) the Kuranda Skyrail was the longest gondola cableway in the world when it was completed in 1995. It's like a very long ski lift except the towers are extremely high, like television towers so that the gondolas are well over the forest canopy. The ground, when it can be seen at all, is about ten storeys below. I imagine it's not a good choice for someone uncomfortable with heights.

 

See album See album
See album See album

Kuranda Skyrail

 

The tropical rainforest below is among the oldest in the world, significantly older than the Amazonian forest - well that's Australia for you.

Once reached, Kuranda is a pretty village almost entirely given over to tourism. I bought a kangaroo leather bush hat - identical to the one that's been several times around the world and is now getting a bit shabby (see elsewhere on this website).

 

See album See album
See album See album

Kuranda

 

Wendy previously visited by train. These days one can take the Skyrail one way and the conventional train the other but we didn't think we had the time - or did we?

Back on the Skyrail we got off at the last stop to have a closer look at the falls. Big mistake - or was it?

 

See album See album
See album See album

Kuranda Falls - not Niagara but apparently better than during the drought - more than a trickle.

 

The last leg on the cable car is the highest and a thunderstorm was on its way. Just as we approached an empty car everything was shut down.

We had booked it ourselves to be back on board to sail at 3.30 - surely they wouldn't go without us? Yes they will we were told: "They take your bags off and leave them on the dock". Thankfully there were people on ship-sponsored tours trapped along with us. Phew!

In the end it would have been OK - the ship was experiencing never identified problems leaving Cairns - was it the tide or motor bearings - or software? No one would say.

 

See album See album

Technical difficulties?

 

Tugs hovered around us for three hours - then suddenly we were off - and soon up to top speed, 22.4 knots, to catch up.

 

 

No comments

Travel

Greece and Türkiye 2024

 

 

 

 

In May 2024 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and after a string of flights landed in Berlin. By now we are quite familiar with that city and caught public transport to Emily and Guido's apartment to be greeted by our grandchildren and their parents.  I have previously reported on their family, so, suffice it to say, we had a very pleasant stay and even got out to their country place again.

From Berlin we flew to Greece and had an initial few days in Athens, before returning to Berlin, then back to Greece, a week later, to join a cruise of the Greek islands and Türkiye (just one port).

At the end of the cruise we spent a self-guided week on Crete. We finished our European trip with a week in Bulgaria, followed by a week in the UK, before flying back to Sydney.

Read more: Greece and Türkiye 2024

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Coronation

Last Time

 

 

When George VI died unexpectedly in February 1952, I was just 6 years old, so the impact of his death on me, despite my parents' laments for a good wartime leader and their sitting up to listen to his funeral on the radio, was not great.

At Thornleigh Primary School school assemblies I was aware that there was a change because the National Anthem changed and we now sang God Save The Queen.

Usually, we would just sing the first verse, accompanied by older children playing recorders, but on special occasions we would sing the third verse too. Yet for some mysterious reason, never the second.

The Coronation was a big deal in Australia, as well as in Britain and the other Dominions (Canada, South Africa and New Zealand) and there was a lot of 'bling': china; tea towels; spoons; and so on. The media went mad.

Read more: The Coronation

Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

 

 

 

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

 

 

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament. 

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived.  It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia  now.

 

Read more: Climate Emergency

Terms of Use

Terms of Use                                                                    Copyright