I made it to Cairns after a drawn out flight via Brisbane, $50 the poorer for having got the departure time wrong. Cairns is a great place: lively and easy to get around, with loads of shops, restaurants and an esplanade to walk along. Apparently there used to be a beautiful white sandy palm-fringed beach here but since they dredged the harbour to enable access for boats it disappeared. Now there are mud flats and mangroves, and a foreshore development with a fake beach and a big public swimming pool. I mooched around and visited the cluttered but interesting museum and art gallery. I met an interesting guy who lived in Saudi Arabia and had spent four years working for the US Navy on Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific - and I though Sakhalin was remote and insular! He recommended the Botanical Gardens, and I walked around there and looked at the orchids, plants, rainforest walk and lakes. I trotted up to a lookout on one of the hills surrounding the city. I also visited the Daintree National Park, which is a gorgeous tropical rainforest with mangroves and saw crocodiles. I also went to Cape Tribulation, a beach of the kind I dream of when I'm sitting in an office, and Mossman Gorge. The surrounding area was lush and green with fields of sugar cane and little railways to transport it. I saw a cassowary in the jungle by the side of the road!