Exploring Australia, February 2016, Part 1

As a decade birthday gift for Erick, we signed up for "Exploring Australia and New Zealand," a University of Michigan Alumni tour coordinated by Odysseys International. This post covers the Cairns and Great Barrier Reef portions of our trip. (You can click on a photo to see a larger version.)

Map of Australia with the major places we visited marked:

Days 1, 2 & 3: Flew into Sydney from LA on Qantas (12 hours and across the international date line, losing a day), and immediately on to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland (another 3 hours), arriving in Cairns in time for a tour briefing and dinner.

The in-seat display monitor showing our landing in Sydney
via the Airbus tail mounted camera.

Day 4 – the tour begins: Took a historic train from Cairns to Kuranda, a village in the rainforest, and returned via the Skyrail rainforest tree canopy gondola ride.

On the train:

Preview photo at the station

All aboard car #8

Inside the car

Vistas from the train:

Glimpse of the Skyride gondola system from the train

In Kuranda:

Our favorite spot in Kuranda

Mating butterflies 

Butterfly sanctuary docent explains feeding stations

Collecting eggs for hatching

Moth caterpillars 

Male Hercules moth

Emerging female Hercules moth

Getting a close look in the research lab

On the gondola ride returning to Cairns:

Top of the forest canopy

Hydropower station

Approaching one of the viewing stations

Happy gondola riders at the viewing station

Park guide at Cassowary display

Kauri pine - a rainforest giant

Orchid in tree

Basket fern in tree

Strangler fig - starts on a branch of a tree
and extends its roots downward

Back on the gondola:

Fruit bats

Ocean view from gondola

Almost at the end of our gondola ride

Koala cuddling during the evening reception at the Wildlife dome of the Pullman Reef hotel where we stayed in Cairns.

Clowning with a koala at one of the
few venues where holding them is permitted

Day 5: Traveled to Michaelmas Cay on the Great Barrier Reef on the large catamaran Ocean Spirit. Bernadette took the semi-submersible boat ride to view the reef and Erick did some scuba diving.  Bernadette visited the Cay which is noted for the birds nesting there.

Our boat to Michaelmas Cay

Leaving Cairns behind

Map of a section of the Great Barrier Reef

Michaelmas Cay from a distance
Currently a sandbar scrubbed clean of vegetation by a typhoon 

View from the mooring spot 

First activity - feeding the fish:

Erick gets ready to scuba dive:

The semi-submersible boat comes in to take us on a tour of the reef:

Semi-submersible reef-viewing boat

The reef and its many coral animals as seen through the glass walls of the semi-submersible boat:

Caught sight of a giant clam

After the reef tour, a trip to the cay - a short one because of the heat and intense sunlight - but worth it to get close to the birds:

Heading for the cay in the beach buggy  

Birds nesting on and fishing near Michaelmas Cay:

Returning to the Ocean Spirit:

The beach buggy

Ocean Spirit catamaran and semi-submersible
as seen from the beach buggy

Leaving Michaelmas Cay and returning to Cairns - the trip was about an hour and a half each way:

Farewell Michaelmas Cay 

Green Cay - a cay that didn't lose its vegetation in the most recent tropical storm

Back in the harbor at Cairns

We had dinner at Tha Fish on the Esplanade in Cairns - Coral Trout for me; Red Emperor for Erick. Later that evening, Erick snapped a photo of fruit bats flying out of their tree roosts to eat.

Next up, the post Exploring Australia, Part 2 - The Outback: Alice Springs, Uluru & Kata Tjuta