Kuranda is a small little village on the Tablelands, but without the tourists, there probably would not be much. We visited the village a little and had lunch. To get back to the coast you can either take the train back, but we took the second option the skyrail. This takes you over the rivers and over the trees and is quite an experience. We have no pictures, but made a lot of video of this trip. And that concluded this part of the vacation.

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Our 2001 Vacation, the vacation of a lifetime (page 5)

Australia's Great Barrier Reef (Cairns)
On August 2, we flew on to Queensland, the state of Australia that contains the Great Barrier Reef and large sections of rain forest. We had rented a nice house for the first 9 days in Oak Beach. That is a small beach about 1 hour north of Cairns and just south of Port Douglas. The beach is roughly a mile long and there were about a dozen houses along it. A few people live here year round, but most houses were either vacation homes or rental properties. The beach faced east, so every morning we could watch a beautiful sunrise, assuming we were up.
The first 6 days were mostly spent on our favorite activities: sitting on the beach and going out for dinner. Below you can see the boys at happy hour, with their sodas and a bucket of prawns. 
The only major activity the first couple of days was a visit to the Rain Forest Habitat, basically a zoo. It has 3 sections, namely an aviary, a rainforest, and an Australian Desert like area. This was the only time during our trip that we saw Koalas or various kangaroos. There are 3 pictures below. The first one shows a Kookaburra. We have seen this bird in several places and though wild, it is relatively easy to approach. The second and third pictures speak for themselves.
The last 3 days we decided to finally go and do some of the sites. First, we went on a tour over the Atherton Tablelands and through many small areas of rain forest. Australia used to have a lot of rain forest, but there is very little left. Most of it was gone by the time the Europeans arrived, but the rest was leveled since then. Less than 1% of the original rain forest is left and it is scattered in small pieces. The picture below tries to give a view of the Tablelands. These are just of the coast up steep slopes. There are only a couple of roads to here and one train line. Originally most of this was rain forest, but now it is mostly farmland.
And what else do you do when you are close to the Great Barrier Reef? You go snorkeling. Therefore, we took a boat trip to one of the cays on the reef. Those boats are big catamarans with 200 or 300 people on them. And these things plow through the water with no regards for wind direction or waves. Not surprisingly many people on the boat were seasick. About 2 hours out of Cairns we stopped at Michaelmas Cay. This is a very large corral reef where a small section has grown above water, collected sand blown in by the wind, and now forms an island. Of course, one good direct hit by a typhoon and it is all gone again. Here we went snorkeling. We saw many very interesting corrals, a lot of colorful fish, and a couple of these huge clams. The largest were at least 3 feet.
The last day Diederik Took the boys on the train to Kuranda. This is now just a tourist train, but originally it was build to bring wood and ore from the Tablelands down to the coast. It is a very scenic ride. Before the train left we had breakfast inside one of the cars that is no longer running.
Kuranda is a small little village on the Tablelands, but without the tourists, there probably would not be much. We visited the village a little and had lunch. To get back to the coast you can either take the train back, but we took the second option the skyrail. This takes you over the rivers and over the trees and is quite an experience. We have no pictures, but made a lot of video of this trip. And that concluded this part of the vacation.

To follow us to Dunk Island please use this link.