Wednesday, May 9

Off to Cairns!

Despite a transit strike that started this morning (thanks Tom!) we hope to be able to get to the airport successfully.  If nothing else we'll take a later flight.  More later.

New at 9:00 PM-  We got here on time and as expected.  1800 miles from Sydney to Cairns, and an additional 30 degrees warmer.  This is what we imagined Hawaii being like.

We took in a mile walk to the main shopping area and snapped those pix.  It's very pleasant here, low humidity, good temperature, few bugs.  Why are there so few bugs?

Take a look at that picture.  It looks like lots of birds coming out at dusk, huh?  Nope - thousands of Bats.  Keep the mosquito population down....

And after dinner we came back to the room, and since it hasn't rained in Cairns since we got here (not yet!), I was able to finally see something I came to see- the Southern Cross.

Tomorrow it's off to a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef.  Cool!


May 20-
I found a better picture of the Southern Cross from some later shots.  It's a little shaky but you can see all the stars, and it displays properly.  Note the 5th star.  It's faint but there.

This constellation is also present on the Australian flag: