Uluru To Cairns

The west coast road trip was great, however, the drive from central Australia to the east coast was definitely not something I'd recommend.

The west coast, even though it's sparsely populated and a deserted wasteland of flies, dirt, and the occasional scrawny tree, manages to come up with interesting places to stop every day or so. The west coast seems to really be trying to gain the attention of tourists, while the east coast, with its Great Barrier Reef and massive landmark-filled cities and Australia Zoo and majority of the Australian population, doesn't have to struggle to bring tourists in. People just show up.

Central Australia, lodged between both of these, doesn't even seem to have or even try to have much worth seeing, other than Uluru. There is but one single attraction that seemed to be common to the tiny towns we passed through on the way from Uluru to the coast: fossils. Even the smallest towns had 'dinosaur discovery centers' and cartoonish dinosaur drawings plastered throughout them. They have found a crap load of fossils out there I guess.



The most interesting fossil center we stopped at was proud of being the site where the world's most intact "Kronosaurus" was discovered. This is basically some giant crocodile with fins that used to prowl around Australia killing thing. A lifesize representation of what the fossil they found would have looked like when living was on display outside:



I wish Jurassic Park was real, so they could start cloning these bad boys and putting them in cages for my amusement.

Anyway, other than the fossil stuff, which was enjoyable, the Uluru to east coast drive was long, hot, and boring until we hit the east coast. At one point the scenery got "interesting" because there were a bunch of hay fields that made it look like Nebraska. Any time a place looking like Nebraska is interesting it's a very bad sign.

As soon as we got close to the east coast, though, the scenery began the change for the better. Suddenly out of no where: trees. LOTS OF TREES. Big awkward trees covering entire mountains and stretching for miles kilometers:







The trees are very splotchy, and not the typical pine-covered mountain scenery I'm used to in Colorado. Mr. Guidebook says they mark the beginning of a long range of vegetation known as the Wet Tropics. After reaching the coast, we headed north, and camped in a rest area for the night. The next morning, we arrived at our destination: Cairns (pronounced 'cans'). This is a large city primarily associated with the Great Barrier Reef, with ads for the reef plastered everywhere.

Before settling in Cairns, however, we took a skyrail rainforest tour to a town called Kuranda, and a scenic railway back that evening. The skyrail was much better than the train (some little kids from India stole our window seat and we were too nice to make them give it back), and was basically a 5-mile gondola ride over an ancient rainforest.





In the time gap between the skyrail and the scenic train back, we grabbed lunch and then stopped off of a butterfly farm, where butterflies of many colors flew around landing on people and such. These two butterflies are doing a "special dance that mommies and daddies do":



There was a really sweet neon blue butterfly flying around, but despite dozens of pictures it was too hard to capture it with the camera.

Back to Cairns via the train, one last night of camping in a rest area (don't knock it till you've tried it, it's legal and free!), and we checked in to a cheap hostel in Cairns and prepared to stay put for a while. At this point both of us were in dire need of a shower and laundry facilities.