KURANDA

For our last day of fun and games around Cairns, we booked the Self-Guided Kuranda Day Trip with Train and Skyrail Tour.

By the time the bus picked us up at our hotel around 9, it was already feeling like Annapolis in July—ninety degrees and menacingly humid. It was going to be a long, hot day in the jungle.

We arrived at the Cairns Central Train Station thirty minutes before the Kuranda Scenic Railway narrow gauge train was supposed to depart and were informed that a tree had fallen across the line somewhere up the track, and it was anybody’s guess when we might leave. So, it was hurry-up-and-wait time.

The older part of the station had no air conditioning, and we were sweating as if trapped inside a steam bath. We chatted at a table by our puffing train with a nice young couple from Brisbane on a weekend holiday who knew more about the United States than most Americans. They asked us how Trump got elected, why we love guns so much, and why we get so obsessed with silly issues like banning books. We were at a loss to explain the direction America was heading. They repeated the line we heard often during our travels Down Under, “We like Americans, but America seems lost.”

An hour later, we were loaded into some handsome hot box carriages made from Silky Oak timbers, dating back to the early 1900s. The fifteen heritage coaches were pulled by two brightly painted 1720 Class, 1000 hp, diesel locomotives that crawled along at a snail’s pace up to the top of a tropical mountain, ending in the theme park town of Karunda. The views were amazing, as was the sweltering heat.

The driving force behind the building of a train line to the top of a totally meaningless jungle mountain in the middle of nowhere was, of course, GOLD. They struck gold in 1873, and they needed a reliable supply route. It’s a familiar refrain that has been sung around the world. And to give you a good sense of the brutal forces and heartless bastards who bankrolled the construction of the Karunda Scenic Railway, the workers had to supply their tools. That would have been like the Forest Service requiring me to bring my own axe and chainsaw when I was working for them fighting wildfires.

And lest you think robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt were the villains, the Kuranda Scenic Railway line was bankrolled by the Queensland Government treasury. The construction of the line was a significant project, involving a considerable cost to the Queensland Government.  While the construction of the difficult “second section” of the railway, which ascends the Great Dividing Range to Kuranda, was contracted to John Robb in 1887, he was only responsible for building the line with his intrepid workforce, not the initial funding. The Queensland Government Railways designed and supervised the project. 

Near the top, we stopped at the Barron Gorge station for a quick look at the jaw-dropping spectacle of Barron Falls, which drops almost 800 feet into a rumbling white river maelstrom. It must have driven the railroad workers nearly mad to see that cool, refreshing torrent of water so close, and yet so far away.

After our 2-hour sauna train ride, we arrived in Kuranda, a jungle bug ride touron town lined with tropical-themed shops, selling authentic Australian crap made in China.

It didn’t matter because at that point, we were delirious from the heat. And we clearly were not thinking straight because we decided we had to see the Koala Gardens on the far side of town. For some inexplicable reason, Inna wanted to pet a goddamn koala. We ended up paying $21 apiece to stumble through a scary-sad park with dazed animals who were baking alive inside enclosures of doom—crocodiles, pythons, kangaroos—and several koalas that clung lethargically to tree branches as if half-dead or drugged. The line to pet Sebastian, the lifeless Koala, was long and Inna quickly lost her enthusiasm for holding one of the poor little buggers.

According to the promotional brochures—and I have no idea what this means—the “village of Kuranda is located in a pristine World Heritage-listed rainforest”. How could a town be inside such a natural wonder? And if that’s not wild enough, it is also the “world’s oldest, continually-surviving tropical rainforest”. I’m wondering who makes such a determination? Is there an international panel of judges? Was there a contest? What are the metrics? What rainforest came in second? Is there a trophy?

And let’s not forget that Kuranda is also home to the incredibly friendly Water Dragons at Frog’s Restaurant, which is famous for its homemade special sauces and dressings—and water dragons. Water dragons are 3-foot lizards indigenous to the Barron River and Kuranda Rainforest. They inhabit freshwater wetlands, rivers, and rainforests and are relatively shy in the wild, but can become accustomed to humans and cheesy restaurants. Water dragons often perch on branches, rocks, or structures, and when threatened, they may drop into the water to escape.  Absent water, they stick out their tongues and bellies in bold defiance—or maybe just fear.

They were lazily hanging out on tables, trash cans, and chairs at Frog’s while Little Bobby, who appeared to be about ten years old, was serving food from a cluttered counter. The place was quite busy, and the tourons seemed to like the water dragons more than the food. To be honest, the water dragons were like any other big lizard I have ever seen. We have 4-foot Green Iguanas down in my winter home in Hollywood Beach, Florida, but they tend to steer clear of restaurants. So, these begging water dragons were indeed different.

Given the sketchy sanitary conditions at Frog’s and the oppressive heat, we chose not to sample the various curry glops they were serving. We continued on through crowded gift shops and restaurants in search of air conditioning. It was, apparently, an alien concept.

In the middle of town, we struck pay dirt. We followed the lunch special signs to the Rainforest View Restaurant. The only reason we stopped there was because the sign outside said it was air-conditioned. It wasn’t. But it had ceiling fans above a nice shady deck amidst the jungle canopy, and we were soaking wet and beyond caring. We would have killed for a glass of ice water.

After lunch, we trudged back down to the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway Station for what turned out to be the best part of our little Kuranda Odyssey. We took a 45-minute ride on the famous Skyrail, spanning five miles over the rainforest canopy. We had the little glass-enclosed car to ourselves, and we stretched out and soaked in the soaring views of the rainforest jungle. We rode over rivers, deep gorges, and tree-draped summits before dropping back down to the Skyrail Smithfield Station about eight miles north of Cairns.

We caught an Uber back to our hotel, rather than wait an hour for the free tour bus, and fifteen minutes later, I was standing under a cold shower, trying to make sense of our 7-hour jaunt up to Kuranda.

Bad heat can spoil a good trip, but in retrospect, the tour had a lot of good points.

The long, sweltering train crawl up the mountain gave us a greater appreciation for how bloody hard it had been for the poor souls who built the rail line. I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

And while the Village of Kuranda was made to look like what a touron would expect a native rainforest jungle village to look like, it still had more variety and style than almost every small town we saw in New Zealand, which were all blandly the same.

The Koala Garden was a ripoff, but a koala petting zoo is always going to be a bad joke. Koalas are like sloths. They are round and fluffy with big eyes, so humans find them cuddly and want to hold them. But they are basically inert and clutch a tree most of the day, occasionally eating a few eucalyptus leaves that zonk them out like heroin. So, paying to see or touch them is pretty pointless—like hugging a stuffed toy—no matter the venue. It’s what tourons do in the jungle, and really no different than fondling sloths on St. Lucia.

The Skyrail Rainforest Cableway ride over the jungle for an incredible 45 minutes was unprecedented and simply out of this world. We had never been on such a long and breathtaking cable car zip line ride before. And probably never will again.

So, was the tour worth it? Yeah, it was certainly different and constantly amusing. It taught us some curious history lessons and took us outside our comfort zone. It made us appreciate a cold shower and an iced beverage. And it steamed us to perfection.