Our life in Tropical North Queensland

Sometimes, you see a new business and you think “It’s about time someone started that”. This is one of those times. Countless cities around the world have an established ‘jump on-jump off’ bus route which takes visitors to all the major tourist attractions; I know London does this beautifully, and Madrid does as well, just to name a couple. And now… so does Cairns!

Although Cairns can’t quite be compared to London or Madrid, and the city centre is really quite compact, some of the popular attractions are located outside of the CBD and well beyond what most people would consider ‘walking distance’. The Flecker Botanical Gardens, for example, are 4.5 kilometres from the city centre. The popular Royal Flying Doctor Service Visitor Centre is a little further. Sure there are local buses, but who can figure out the bus routes and timetables?

With Cairns Explorer, you know that the bus does a continual loop every hour, so if you disembark at the Esplanade at ten past eleven, you know it will be swinging by again at ten past twelve to take you to your next destination. The route takes in Cairns Central Shopping Centre, the Esplanade, the Cairns Wildlife Dome, the Jack Barnes Bicentennial Mangrove Boardwalk, the RFDS Visitor Centre, the Flecker Botanical Gardens, and … wait for it… even Cairns’ newest and tastiest attraction, the Blue Sky Brewery which Maria mentioned in her previous blog post.

For $20, it’s a great way to orientate yourself and see the best of what Cairns has to offer without wearing yourself out. Like I said, it’s about time someone started offering this type of service!

Opened only a couple of weeks ago, Blue Sky Brewery is already attracting the crowds in search of home brewed beer.

I won’t be able to describe the beer at this new Cairns venue in depth, as I was the designated driver and was allowed to have only a couple of the lightest beer that they served. But from the amount of beers Steve and our others friends had, I think the experience they had must have been very good.

Apart from serving all the spirits you can think of and having an extensive wine cellar, the main attraction of this new venue is the handcrafted beer they brew onsine. Six different boutique beers, from the lightest one to the darkest variety, that will delight beer lovers. I started, and carried on with their lager, a really light but tasty and refreshing drink. Steve, even though he was determined to try each beer, only tried three different ones until he found the one he really loved: the blue sky pilsner, as he said that the taste was unusual although delicious. Our friend Dan started from the lightest one and finished with the darkest one, but I cannot say how many times he went over the menu, as we left around 11.30pm and he was still going back to the bar.

We also tried their food, as the Spaniards know very well, it’s not healthy drinking on a empty stomach. Most of us had pizza, and mine was delicious. Steve wasn’t as happy with his choice, Daintree pizza, it was a bit plain. Hehe, I don’t know why he keeps choosing his own food, more than frequently whatever I order is usually much better than his order. And this time it wasn’t otherwise.

All in all, we loved the place and we will definetely go back there again, hopefully very soon. We still have to try their ginger beer, so far the only ginger beer I have tried is the non alcoholic one, and I’m more than eager to try the real stuff. Only one little complain, the lights are too bright and it wouldn’t hurt to turn them down a bit after a certain time.

We’ve been busy these last days meeting with Spanish people. It’s great to know that more and more Spaniards are keen to travel to the other side of the world. Hopefully we will stop thinking that Australia is too far away and will be eager to discover this fabulous country. So we met up with Sonia and Javi, from Bilbao, with Monica and her group, from Madrid, with Isabel and Arkaitz, also from Bilbao, with Roger and Miriam, from Barcelona… I guess I cannot complain, I love meeting up with them and share a bit of our culture. I will never get tired of saying how small the world is, I knew one of the guys from Madrid from going to the same venues in the city.

But what’s news this week is that WE FINALLY HAVE THE TICKETS TO GO TO MADRID IN DECEMBER!!! I will try to keep it quiet from my family and surprise them. So shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh everyone!

My first agricultural show in Australia (yes, we’re telling the truth when we say how difficult is to have some free time when you run a business). But the day was promising and neither of us felt like sitting in front of the computer much, so we decided to take a few hours off and go to Cairns Agricultural Show.

My first impression was extremely disappointing, only for one reason: all we could see from the entrance was endless rides, roaller coasters, fast food stand and those stands where you have to hit a bottle with a ball or a duck with a fake rifle and you win some little prize. We hadn’t come to an agricultural show for this. So we spent about half an hour looking around, seeing people enjoy themselves (and others not so much after having been in one of those awful rides). We managed to take a photo and although not very good, it will give you an idea of what I’m talking about. And this ride wasn’t even the worst one (yes, I must admit I hate rides if they make me sick, I guess I have inherited this from my mum).

So we kept on walking around and finally managed to leave behind all the mayhem of this funfair. We stumbled upon a shed that looked like it had something happening inside and of course, we went to have a look. At last we had found where we had come to see: the Agricultural Show. Lots of stands from the region, showcasing the Atherton Tablelands, Tropical North Queensland’s Outback and a good number of small local businesses introducing or letting people know about their products and services. The first stand we came across was the Atherton Tablelands and Outback, where we met Jim, from The Hub Chillagoe. We had a good chat with him about the region and how, little by little, more and more car rental companies in the region let their cars be driven to Chillagoe. Which is great for tourists, as the Chillagoe Caves, the main attraction of Chillagoe, are absolutely breathtaking and such a world away from the beaches and the reefs of the coast.

Next was the Chinese clinic, where I had acupuncture without needles, only a machine somehow glued to my back. After ten minutes receiving electric discharges, my back muscles felt much more relaxed and loose. Exactly what I needed to keep on wondering around. I had a funny sense of deja vu, attending shows is what I used to do during my last months of working for Nortel in Spain. One show in Barcelona, one show in Granada, etc. Definetely it was nice to be wondering from stand to stand instead of being behind a stand for endless hours. Although I must admit that it was fun, mostly when the show closed for the day and we knew we had a few hours to spare. Because, who sleeps during those shows, mostly if you are in another city with lots of people who don’t want to sleep either? Well, I had some colleagues who had small kids and it was their opportunity to catch up on sleep. If we let them…

We also visited the stand where all the Tropical North Queensland fruit wineries were present, showcasing their delicious tropical fruit wines. Even though I haven’t tried them all, so far I can say that the lychee one is one of my favourites. Another one I love, even though is not wine but liqueur, is the coffee one De Brueys produces. Absolutely delicious. We finally met Tony, from Shannonvale Tropical Fruit Winery, in Mossman, and it’s always good to catch up with Elaine, from De Brueys, near Mareeba.

Another interesting side of the show was the artisans building their products, as well as the agricultural competitions that took place during the day. One competition we made it on time to watch was the woodchopping one. Remember I’m a city girl, so all these things are a bit out of my league and I find them fascinating. Five guys, some young, some not so young, but all of them fairly muscly. The first one started chopping a thick log and after a few seconds, the second one started ans so on, until it was time for the last guy, a young big bloke, to start chopping his log. Can you imagine who won the competition? This last guy, after a few second he had cut his log in two.

And then it was the snakes show, where a speaker was presenting some of the most venomous snakes of Australia and giving a few hints to avoid being bitten by snakes. Do you want to know a bit more about it? Visit our travelling safe page.

The first snake is the most venomous one in the world. He also said that it was one of the fastest to bite. As soon as he said that none of us had their arms over the fence where he was enclosed with the snakes. The second one, even though it doesn’t look like a big snake, is called Death Adder. Do I need to add anything else to its description? I’ve always been fascinated by snakes, I find them very intriguing. But I don’t know if I’d have the nerve to get so close to them…