Peppard Blog: Kuranda and Hartley's

We spent the last two days doing a tour up to a small town called Kuranda, followed by a Crocodile wildlife park where Jon got to feed the crocs!

We took a heritage train up to Kuranda, which was pretty cool. There was a lot of information about the engineering and hard labor that went into building this railway during the gold rush. It also offered some spectacular views.

We have another picture of the back of the train too!

In Kuranda we visited some local markets, had a pint at a pub where '...the beer was so cold it took a bloke's breath away - he needed to be revived by the barmaid', and did a short nature walk which emptied out into a ~~delightful~~ terrible 1.5KM walk through the town streets. Nothing like an uphill walk through a ~~asphalt~~ bitumen jungle!

To get down from Kuranda we took the Skyrail. It took six years to get the necessary permits to build the towers in the National Reserve Forest and about a year to build. All of the cement and metal was flown in by helicopter to prevent damage to the rainforest. We had a lot of fun on the way down and the view was breathtaking - only a few meters from the forest canopy!

Just meters away from the Canopy - and (Bear Grills voice) certain death!

After a successful day we made our way home and had a delicious barbeque with Jon, Tegan, Chris, and Janice who are also in Cairns.

The next day was dedicated to Hartley's Crocodile Adventure - a smaller zoo/park that started out as a roadside Tea House. The entrepeneur purchased Charlie the Crocodile on a whim and the tea house morphed into the conservation park as we saw it today!

I ended up comparing this park with Australia Zoo - not quite as many animals, but it felt a lot more intimate and truthfully we enjoyed it a lot more. Jon got to pole feed the crocs, we saw a cool crocodile show, snake handlers, a river boat tour, the kids held a crocodile and a snakem, Austin fed the crocs some chicken... it was a great day!