From Brisbane to Cairns to Port Douglas

I woke up at a little after 5:00 am and apparently Judy had already been up for 2 hours. I guess that happens when you go to bed at 8:30 in the evening. Obviously, we are still adjusting to the time change. The other odd thing was that at 5:00 in the morning, it was bright sunshine outside. I'm assuming that the Aussies don't believe in daylight savings time.

Anyway, since we were both awake and had a few hours to kill before we caught the train to the airport for our trek to Port Douglas, why not go have some breakfast? We took a little detour through a park that was right across the street from our hotel. There is an old windmill there that apparently is the oldest structure in Brisbane, that I learned by reading the sign right next to it. That was about 5 minutes killed. Check.

We headed down to St. George Plaza and found an open-air restaurant\coffee shop that not only had some good food, but also was a prime location for some serious people watching. The plaza had City Hall on the other side and was a major thoroughfare for pedestrians heading to work, school or wherever they were headed. The clock tower in the City Hall had the bell chimes going off each 15 minutes. which was pretty cool. We managed to kill some real time here.

We still had about another 90 minutes to waste, so after stopping at the post office for some stamps and a store for some post cards (Yes, Maureen....you will get one), we spent the rest of our morning walking through parts of the Botanical Gardens that we didn't see yesterday. Check out the size of the bamboo compared to Judy in the foreground and one of the many banyan trees that populate these gardens.

One of the other things we noticed in Brisbane is that there are many school children that wear full uniforms complete with hats. We only got a couple of pictures of them, as we did not want to be seen as stalkers or anything. It is definitely another throwback to the old days.

After successfully killing the time we needed, we collected our bags and headed out to the airport for our flight to Cairns. We caught the train and the ride to the airport was really easy. We queued up to check in our bags (Aussies are extremely polite about queues), and had enough time to grab a quick sandwich. We got to to our gate for the flight at the appointed hour, but no boarding was taking place, even though it appeared that everyone had disembarked. We could see that the paramedics had pulled up to the plane and boarded it. After about a 30 minute delay, they brought down a woman in a wheel chair who had a barf bag in her hand and.......it appeared.....was using it. At that point, what immediately entered my mind was that I sure hope I don't get her seat.

We eventually boarded and had a pretty uneventful flight to Cairns, as long as you didn't mind young kids screaming & yelling the entire flight. Thank God for iPods! Once we arrived, the fun was just beginning. Judy had arranged for a transfer to Port Douglas by car. She made it sound like there would be a guy with a sign wating for us at baggage claim holding a card with our name to whisk us off to our final destination. Instead, we got a glorified Super Shuttle ride that took us to every nook & cranny between the airport and Port Douglas. The one thing I have to say is that the driver was not slow, not even on the twisty roads above the ocean shore while in the rain. That was certainly an interesting ride. We were glad to arrive in 1 piece!

We are hoping that the weather willl clear up so that we can go out to the Grea Barrier Reef. Even if it doesn't, we are glad we weren't home for the 2 earthquakes yesterday!