DAY 8 - CAIRNS AND ITS BEACHES

Today we decided to check out Cairns, and all of its beaches.  We left home around 9am with a list of places to go visit.
Before we left the caravan Park, we went and booked our Rail/Skyrail tickets for Monday's trip to Kuranda.   Interestingly enough we met another couple around our age booking a trip for the same day.  Somehow the guy behind the corner made a joke about Holden Cars and the old gentlemen said you need to be careful, I work for Holden,  and I piped in and said, well my Dad was a Holden dealer for many years.    Anyway the long and the short of it was that we got talking and he knew my dad,  he is also good friends with my cousin and her family in  Rockhampton, and then we find out that they live in Rockhampton too.  Very small world.

We headed into town, and our first stop was the Information Centre,  we wanted brochures on Mossman Gorge, and a few other places around Cairns that we were interested in.    Our first stop was to head to the Rusty Street Markets,  the lady at the Information Centre told us to park pretty much where we were ( no parking meters there) and it wasn't that big of a walk to walk into town.
On our way we came across this  alley off Grafton street that had this amazing graffeti ( all legally done),  the alley also houses a real upmarket cafe and bar and a very interesting second hand book store.

Lane off Grafton Street covered in Graffeti

 We continued down Grafton Street until we saw the sign for Rustys.  The Markets are all under cover, and packed with people, making the whole experience very hot and sweaty. 

Very colourful Markets

 If you liked Blue and Red Coral jewellery, than this was the place for you to visit.    These markets were not quite what I expected.  They did have these cute owl backpacks which I couldn't resist.  I ended up getting a child's one for Willow.
I was amazed at all the fresh fruit and vegetables that were there... These markets were more about food than anything else.  All very colourful.

Plenty of Fresh fruit and vegetables. 

 They also sold fresh seafood.  Steve couldn't help himself, he had to buy a kilo of freshly cooked prawns, which we took to the park and devoured for lunch.
One of the other things, the markets had, were fresh flowers.  A lot of these kinds of flowers I had never seen in my life before.  It turned out that they were all different sorts of Ginger flowers.  They really were quite spectacular. 

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 After leaving Rusty's, it was getting close to lunch time, so we decided to walk down to the Esplanade and have our lunch on the water front.  One of the store keeps at Rusty's told us the quickest way to the esplanade was to head back a little and turn and walk down City Place.  it was almost like a mall. 

The Fauna strolling down City Place

 It was quite a pretty walk, and it wasn't long before we got to the Esplanade, where there were more markets in progress. 

Cairns Esplanade

The Lagoon on the Esplanade in Cairns

 We found ourselves a nice shady spot until a nice big tree to have our lunch.  The area around the Lagoon was packed with holiday makers, mostly foreign tourists. 

Lunch and a rest

 We must of spent a good hour here just chilling out and relaxing and enjoying our surroundings.  There was a beautiful sea breeze, lovely music, and it was just a lovely place to be. 
 Whilst we were having out lunch this helicopter fulled in and then left again with a load of tourists, 

Helicopters coming in to land and taking off. 

 After laying there for what seemed ages ( probably only 45 minutes of so) we decided to take a nice stroll along the esplanade front. 

Life on the Esplanade in Cairns

 Before heading back to the cars, we had a little wander around the Parks here as well. 

Street Markets at the Esplanade - Cairns

 We left Cairns city and headed back to our car, ready to go explore all the beaches.  Our first stop was Machin Beach

Machin Beach

 We were told by some of the locals that this beach is more like the Hippieville of Cairns.  it certainly is a very different beach.  The Esplanade is really very narrow, with the houses being built right up to the road.  One of the things that really fascinated us, was the number of table and chairs, and old lounge chairs etc that were on the very front of the beach front.  Seems they would just walk across the road and plant themselves down for a quite rest. 

From Machin Beach, we headed to  Holloways Beach,  I really liked this beach.  Love the fact that most of the beaches in this area are not commercially done up.   The beaches around here at simple and undeveloped.

Holloways Beach

One of the things we really liked about Holloways Beach, was this lovely little Care/ Bar that was located right on the beach front.  This became our afternoon tea stop.    it was so relaxing to just sit there and let the sound of the waves etc wash over your very soul.

Enjoying Afternoon Tea at "Strait on the Beach"

 We left Holloway's Beach and headed to Yorkey's Knob.  It never ceased to amaze us that these little beaches are so underdeveloped.   There certainly were families using them and enjoy theses

Yorkey's Knob - reliving our childhood.

 The next beach we headed to was Trinity Beach,  this is where our friends Mike and Ann now live, so we were a little familiar with the location, as we had aready been to have lunch with them.  We really like this beach,  it was definately set up for family fun times.  When wr were there they had all this big blowup swimming aides foor the kids to play on.  They were in hot demand

Trinity Beach

 When we were looking for a carpard here, we noticed that there was a lookout at the top of the cliff, so Steve and I decided to walk up what felt like a zillion steps to the top looking for the lookout.  The view was pretty special

View from the Lookout above Trinity Beach

 The next beach we took off to explore was Kewarra Beach.  This was a very undeveloped beach near the beach front.  Lots and lots of million dollar houses here I am sure

Miles of unspoilt beaches

 Our second last stop was Clifton Beach,  it was starting to get a little late in the day when  we visited this beach, and especially so for taking photos.   But from this beach you could see the jetty which was located at Palm Cove

Clifton Beach

 Our last stop was Palm Cove.  this definitely was a tourist beach, with lots of resorts, lots of little boutique shops, and lots of wedding,   We saw four there in the couple of hous

Palm Cove

 One of the things that impressed us both, was the fact that they had left these beautiful old stringy bark trees that lined the street.  We were very impressed to see that even the buildings were designed around life with these trees. 

Weddings at Palm Cove

One of the things I couldn't resist doing was taking a photo of these weddings and their bridal cares.  they looked very impressive at the Jelly at Palm Cover.

We left there about 6pm to head home when we got a call from our friends Mike and Ann, wanting to know whether we would like to drop in and have a cuppa tea with them on our way home.  It was nice to catch up with them again, and we made plans to spend the day together on Sunday to head up to Port Douglas and Mossman.