Day 2: Cairns and Mission Beach

Thankfully we all slept well.  Breathe huge sigh of relief!

After a cruisey start, we headed to Rusty's market to buy some tropical fruit.  Steve was pretty disinterested and in all the time that he spent in Cairns, he had never been there.  As we got in the door, Julian saw all the trinkets and was in Julian heaven.  He decided that he HAD TO BUY a set of 5 shells with his pocket money.  I told him that we had to walk around all the market first just to make sure that he didn't change his mind.  So we were about to hit the food and vege section of the market when Steve spotted this chilli sauce stand:

 Steve was in chilli heaven.  He walked away with 1 of each bottle including the 2 million scoville sauce (if that can be believed!).  I then bought some fruit including some lovely rambutans - Claire heaven!

After the fruit, we bought Julian's shells and peace was restored.  That was until we got outside and Rohan decided it was his turn to be grumpy - must be morning tea time :)  Thankfully there was a coffee shop near by which had a nice selection of cakes, so we stopped there for morning tea.  Julian wanted to sit outside, so we did and we all froze.  Who knew that it could be cold in Cairns?  The boys had strawberry milkshakes so that did not help them stay warm.  We had a good chat to the owner and he recommended a few nice places nearby to visit with the kids.


Today the plan (my plan) was to muck around Cairns for the day.  However Rohan thought that we needed to go somewhere in the car, Julian wanted to go to the pool and Steve didn't mind what we did!  And now both boys were getting grumpy and it was only morning tea time!  There was no way they could cope with a day of walking sight seeing, so Steve suggested a drive to Mission beach.  It was only an easy 2 hour drive south, past Innisfail.  Everyone liked this idea, so we popped into Woolworths to pick up some iced finger buns before heading to the apartment to collect the beach stuff and pack a lunch.

So we drove out of Cairns at 11:20am, just in time to see the first wave of light rain and then heavy rain pass through.  The road south was lined with sugarcane which was ready to be harvested and banana trees - I had no idea they weren't as tall as coconut trees.

The bananas are protected by the bags

Sugarcane lining the road

There were more light showers heading into Mission Beach and the temperature dropped to 22C!  When we arrived the rain stopped but we could see the next band of showers coming at us, just behind Dunk Island.  It was cold on the beach but Julian loved it and wanted to swim!  He also found coconuts on the foreshore so he had some fun collecting them.  But it was really cold, so we decided to have our finger buns up in the sheltered area in the little village.

Then it started to rain again, so 3 of us decided that we wanted to leave.  Julian eventually decided that he didn't want to walk home, so he joined us.  And guess what?   He was asleep soon after!

And then they changed roles.

So it was a quiet trip home.  We even saw some cane harvesting (which I didn't take a snap of).

Packing the cane into the rail trucks ready for the train.

We did see a Cane Train but this is the only photo that turned out:

We got back to the apartment around 4pm, so we went out onto the balcony for a drink and watched the showers over the hills on the outskirts of Cairns.  The boys were full of beans, so we decided to walk to the information centre before going out for dinner.  We also dressed in polar fleeces and jeans/trackpants as we didn't want a repeat of the frozen boys that we had last night.

The information centre was playing movies of trips to the reef, so the boys (3 of them) were entertained whilst I talked to the lady at the counter.  We then walked to a Thai place that Steve used to frequent.  Unfortunately, like many, it has changed ownership and now is a Greek restaurant.  I am not a fan of Greek food (unless it is home-cooked), so we went across the road to Jimmy's Burger joint.  Rohan wasn't keen until he found out that we could eat outside, and then it was all smiles.

I had their Crispy Chicken burger and the boys had their Classic Beef burger.  They were both good. Unfortunately Julian was still recovering from being grumpy earlier in the day so we only just survived dinner...

On the walk back home we caught a few minutes of the All Blacks vs Lions game and saw the Lions score a try.  Julian was cheering for the ABs, so that thawed me a bit towards him :P

Back home for a shower and bed for the boys.  We watched the ABs roll the Lions, so the day ended well.