Cairns, North Queensland 

                                                                                               

Episode 1

Exciting times…

Travelling.  I have been a really lucky person, in that a lot of the countries I visited had places you wouldn’t find on a tourist map, and Episode one  is about North Queensland and the Northern Territory of Australia.  This was the very last trip of my life, as I had major heart surgery a few months later, and that was it for me. No more travel!!!  But instead of sitting down like a chicken with its wings clipped, I revisit my favourite places through my mind’s eye, time and time again. So here goes……

This is an account of my last journey made in May 1996, just five months before my heart valve replacement.  My itinerary was Auckland, Sydney, Cairns, Gove and Darwin. And I had my sights set on Kakadu and the islands of Bathhurst and Melville, not too far away from Darwin, if you are a bird.

I set off for Cairns after having spent a week in Sydney, visiting with my daughter and my old friends.   I flew north with Ansett, now defunct. And what a good company they were to fly with!!  The flight took three hours and I arrived in Cairns around midday.  I had booked into a place I had found in one of the tourist guide books.

Cairns is a small modern city, with lots of flash hotels, apartments and rooming houses of all kinds.  The place I stayed in was called Costa Bianca and I had a very nice upstairs apartment, with a lovely view over the water –when the tide was in!! I was amazed  to see huge expanses of mud when the tide went out, but later learned that the government had dredged out what they laughingly called a “river”, really a mangrove creek,  to accommodate naval patrol boats. They had just dumped all the mud and rubbish offshore from the esplanade waterfront. I couldn’t believe it.  I got up early every day and saw the sun rise over the coconut palms. The apartment garden also had a lovely big old swimming pool, which I put to good use every day.

To be continued…….