Day 9 - Townsville to Cairns

We got up bright and early on Thursday the 28th of June for the drive to Cairns. It is a 4 hour drive straight through and we had detours planned. Jen and Craig were driving, and were staying in the same hotel as us until Saturday before going to the Tablelands.

The road to Cairns was mainly surrounded by sugar cane fields, which get a tad repetitive after a while, however we also drove through the land that was hit by Cyclone Larry last year. The vegetation was recovering well although you could see where the damage was caused. Many of the larger trees were lop sided and scraggly.

Our first stop along the way was mission beach, a beautiful wide sandy beach lined with palm trees and offering beautiful views. The cassowary speeding sign was from the road into mission beach.

We then drove on to the Tablelands, which is essentially rainforrested mountains with a flat top.
I have a theory that the top of the tablelands was cut off at some point and wacked down near Townsville to become Paluma, The mountains there come straight down to the road heavily forested without much change in the slope, then the land flattens out abruptly at the base to become fields. We made a few stops as we drove through, at one of the little towns for lunch; at the Curtain Fig Tree national park to take photos of the big curtain fig for mum ('there's a quilt in that!'); and for coffee at a lake which filled a volcano crater, which I keep forgetting the name of.

We made it into Cairns late afternoon, and after checking in to the Mecure harbourside and settling into our rooms, which in Chris and my case were on the 5th of 7 floors facing the mountains, headed into town to do some shopping. I bought sunnies and new bathers, and Chris bought boardies. We then met back up with Jen and Craig and went out for a seafood buffet dinner at Charlies, which Jen and Craig recommended and which turned out to be right next to the hotel.