Kuranda, Qld

Day 5

Today we made our way up to the markets at Kuranda. It’s one of those ‘must do’ things, but I fail to see the attraction. First, it’s just more of the same, with the added bonus of really ordinary souvenirs for the hordes of tourists that are channelled up here via the railway, skyway and bus. There’s a cruise ship with 3000 passengers in port today, so a fair heap of them are here as well. The reality is, once you skim the surface, there isn’t any substance to the markets. Besides, half of the stalls are closed, so there’s even less chance of it making a big impact. Come 2pm, when the last of the buses have collected their charges and gone to meet the train / skyway / boat, they start closing the village down.

One place that didn’t close was the Butterfly Sanctuary, Judy’s favourite place. It’s really a  nice experience being in the company of these gentle and very pretty creatures, flittering and fluttering all around the place. The challenge was to get a decent snap of an electric blue Ulysses butterfly, but they are just so pesky! They just never stop fluttering, and when they do alight upon a likely source of food, they close their wings up. We probably took about a 100 snaps, none of which are any good really, but we had some fun trying. One fellow who heard us discussing switching to continuous snap mode changed as well and had an immediate result. Rats.

Back down on the coast we went to Yorkes Knob marina where the shuttle boats from the cruise ship, Pacific Dawn, where shuttling to. That boat was at least a km of shore, right where the shallow green turned into deep blue. We understand that tomorrow they sail for Port Douglas, so it’ll be interesting to see where they park it there.

Me and butterfly. Butterfly Sanctuary. Kuranda, Qld