Cairns

Thursday 1st
It was time to tackle the Great Divide and head down into Cairns. We packed lunch to spend the day in Cairns. The drive from Mareeba to Cairns was fantastic. Slow windy roads and if you looked out your window down the edge you could see through the trees down into a creek or river. It would be great to see in the wet season. Water would be flowing in huge amounts down the side of the mountains. They were doing quite a bit of road works through there which made the drive even slower but I guess the dry season is the time for up grades and making sure the drains are ready for the monsoons.
In Cairns we found the Lagoon which the kids enjoyed swimming in but it was a little cold.

It looked really good with the mountains in the back ground. This is man made as you can't swim at the real beach for the same reasons that we couldn't swim at Darwin. The tide was out a long way too as you can just see in the back ground the sand. When the tide is in that would be covered in water. It was packed with people at the Lagoon. Most were sun baking though, not swimming.  After that we went to Cairns Central shopping centre.
Kimberly has saved up her money and has put her name down to go on a hot air balloon ride over this area. It only costs $50 but you are on standby and they call you up the night before if they have a space to fill. Tim or I will go with her. What hard jobs us parents have to do some times! We watched the balloons this morning as we were having breakfast as they come pretty close to the camp grounds here. Then a bit later on we met a guy that was actually on one of them. He said it was excellent, so we will see if we can get on.