Bus, Planes and Treeeeeeeeeeees!

So Monday I got up early and had a Lovely early morning Skype in one of the hammocks 😀 .

After this I got all my gear and got the shuttle to town for 10:30 and then found the 131 bus to the Botanic gardens which left just after 11:00. The return was $5.20 for around 6km trip each way. So I arrived around 11:20 and entered the gardens which are made up of 3 areas. The main area is the Botanic gardens, the other two areas are the board-walk forest and lakes, the final area is the forest walk up to Mt. Whitfield.

I started with a tour around the gardens this was a great opportunity to get some awesome photos. The gardens are not that big but I still spent around an hour walking around. After which I had a quick read of the notice boards before taking the track up Mt. Whitfield. There are 2 routes Red and Blue, Red ends up over looking Cairns Airport and the bay area beyond, you can also see back to Cairns itself. The Blue route continues to the top of Mt. Whitefield at 325m.

I headed up the Red with the intention to continue on the Blue route at the top of the Red. I got to the top of the Red which was a very well laid out path and easy to navigate along. I then started on the Blue which was not as well marked and after around 500m decided to turn around on the grounds not many others were walking up it, along with this nobody knew I was going up there and I was not happy with the route, so I played safe and return to the view point at the top of the Red route.

Here I stopped for Lunch and also did some plane spotting [I’m not a plane spotter really]. My lunch reminded me of school days, having my pack lunch 🙂 only difference is I had to make it not Mum. I then headed down the hill and stopped of at the visitor centre. Here I stopped for a ice cold milkshake, was delicious vanilla made with ice cream.

Next was to have a look around the Centenary Lakes board-walks. I was taking different photos and on one lens change from 50mm to 10mm I dropped my 50mm, my heart stopped and I though shit I have bust it. Sure enough I had popped the focus ring out of its housing slightly. Not that I wanted to but a little brute force popped it back into place and I set about checking the auto and manual focus on the lens, Thankfully it worked and I think I got away with it!

I continued around the walk and on the way back came across a couple of Aussie trying to get a pic of them hugging a huge paper-bark tree, so I took a picture for them and they insisted that I have a picture of myself hugging the tree, well I did. Then while waiting for the bus I got heckled by them from across the road, ‘tree hugger’. 🙂 made me laugh, some Aussies are bonkers but a good laugh.

It was Aussie BBQ night and you can read that in my previous post, but after I headed to town with some others from the hostel including a couple of aussie’s and they helped me chose the proper Aussie beer [larger].