Remember the Great Wall of China and fear of cable cars? Well, we’ve come a long way from there and not just geographically. Today we did Skyrail, the 7.5km cable car running above the Barron Gorge National Park, built in 1995 with each of the 36 towers or pylons being lifted into place by helicopter so as not to disturb the rainforest. It is billed as the world’s only rainforest cableway. Normally, you would choose to go up on the Kuranda Scenic Railway and down on Skyrail or vice versa. We didn’t have that option because the scenic railway wasn’t running as repair work was being done to the track after a landslide a few weeks ago. So we did Skyrail both ways. The views were stunning and it was a real experience.
Neither of us was very comfortable to start with – we are not ‘cable car’ people (which is the main reason we’ve never downhill ski-ed).A third of the way up, we got off (it was a proper stopping point, it wasn’t that we’d just had enough!) at Red Peak Station (545metres – or 1788 feet high, the highest point), and walked along the boardwalk viewing point. Beautfiul, with more to come. Two-thirds of the way up, we again got off at the Barron River Gorge and Falls,
and had a walk around. Finally, we reached the top, and it has to be said that Kuranda village itself was disappointing. Hippies ‘discovered’ the village in the late ‘70s and it is full of not very good craft and clothes shops. We had a drink and spent a pleasant hour or so talking to some Aussie miners who work in the centre of the country, before taking the Skyrail down again and meeting the tour coach to take us back to Port Douglas.
After Daintree on Saturday we’d wondered if it was worth doing Kuranda but it certainly was. Daintree was seeing the rainforest at ground level and really learning a lot about it. Kuranda was seeing a different rainforest from above.
The whole day was a great experience. We keep saying to each other that on this trip, every few days we do something that would be a major highlight in any of our usual fortnight’s holidays.
Tonight we had a fantastic meal at On the Inlet, a waterside fish restaurant with fantastic views of the harbour. Both Sid and I have absolutely loved Port Douglas – it is a really wonderful town that we’d return to any time we come back to Oz. Time to pack now.
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