Day 6 - Trip to Cairns and Port Douglas

It was a easy travel day today and fairly uneventful.  Staying at the hotel at the airport made the walk over to the Qantas Domestic terminal easy.  And here is something we never see any more in the US.  Qantas will give you a meal on a domestic flight.  I don't know if it is every flight, but it was nice to have a little brekkie on the three hour flight.

And speaking of flying, if you fly a lot or have a long flight, I suggest you buy a pair of noise canceling headphones.  Or if you are lucky, someone who is thinking of you will buy a pair for you.  I have a pair of Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones.  One word describes these headphones.  Awesome.  Bose is so confident that anyone who may see you with these babies on will want a pair (I don't know how anyone would know they are awesome from just seeing them because it is really hard to let someone borrow them for more than 8 seconds), they give you a referral card in the carrying case.  They make a trip seem to go faster when you can put your favorite music on your smart phone, or even if you just want to cut the noise from the jet engine roar.  Thanks, Katy.

It felt a little odd to fly three hours north to be at a warm beach.  This area of Australia (Northern and Outback Queensland) had its gold rush in the 1800s as well, but the gold has been mined out by the 20th century.  With the beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, and the warm weather, this is primarily a tourist spot, though as we drove from Cairns to Port Douglas, we saw a number of sugar cane fields along the way.

Cairns is the only city here.  I have no idea how large it may be since we took our shuttle from the airport directly to Port Douglas.  Very nice airport.  Port Douglas is about 75 kilometers from Cairns and is one of two small towns in the area, and it looks like there are a couple of other villages, but that's about it.  Port Douglas was once a fishing harbor, but that has gone pretty much by the wayside as well.  This is a remote area, and I would say that it is more remote than Apollo Bay, except there is Sheraton Mirage Resort, the only evidence of a big corporate presence in the area.  I am having to write in my notes and will post this blog when we get to Sydney, or whenever the hotspot works here.  We'll see.

We are staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Port Douglas.  It is at the end of the Four Mile Beach and at the end of Macrossan Street, It is off season and things are relatively quiet, except the 20th Anniversary of the Port Douglas Carnivale Festival started Friday, the 16th and goes through May 25.

After we were settled in, we went to the beach and watched the Yabusame Horse Archery Competition.  This competition is a Japanese tradition to please the gods, but I really didn't get much other information from our commentators as they were obviously having as good of a time as anyone.  It is Carnivale after all.  But as Carnivales go, this one is pretty tame.  Which is nice.  There are a lot of families here.

Here is a picture of one of the riders.

The riders in the Yabusame Competition wear traditional dress.  What type or what it means, other than the clan you may be a member of, we weren't sure.  As we said, we weren't getting a lot of information from the commentators.  The idea is the contestants keep their horse at gallop as they shoot the arrows at the three targets.  That takes a lot of skill.  Even if a contestant hits the target, if the horse has slowed to a trot, it doesn't count.  And it was skill that the Malaysian team had over the Japanese and Australian teams.  So, the competition originated in Japan but the Malaysian team won this time anyway.  While the competition was going on, the gsb Helicopter service flew a huge Australian flag.  I would say it was random, but the number of times they were mentioned by the commentators, I would say it wasn't exactly random.  The Southern Cross is part of the flag.

That does not count as a Southern Cross sighting.

We then went into town, or more accurately, walked up the street.  A lot of the buildings built in the 1800's remain.  One of them is the Courthouse Hotel.  We stopped and had a couple of beers their and watched North Melbourne kick the snot out of Brisbane in an Australian Rules Football game.  I have no idea what in the world they are doing, but it is entertaining.

There are a lot of different restaurants and shops, and art galleries along the street.  We enjoyed the walk to the end of Macrossan Street, to the World War I monument.  This country has a lot of monuments to the Great War.  I have a picture of a monument in my digital camera of one in Colac and the one here.

I caught a cold to start this trip and unfortunately, Rene caught it as well.  So, we took it easy this evening to get ready for the trip along the Great Barrier Reef.  The clouds cleared before we went to bed in time to see the Crux again.  That is so cool.

Cheers!