Musical Adventures: Cairns - Soooo Many Trees

Our time in Cairns was amazing. On our second day, we volunteered and planted trees and shrubs at a school and repotted seedlings at a nursery in the rainforest. The plants we planted are all food and shelter for the Cassowary bird. There are only about 1500 left in Australia and they are very important to the health of the rainforest because they digest and move seeds for many trees that are essential to the rainforest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary

http://australian-animals.net/casso.htm

While we helped repot the seedlings, they also told us about a bunch of the plants in the area. We also got to eat a green ant. It is kind of like a wiggly sour candy. We had a really cool bus driver who told us all sorts of interesting things about which trees were introduced and considered pests, the geology of Queensland, and all about sugar cane. There are a bunch of sugar cane fields along the road that were being harvested as we passed. The hills surrounding Cairns I would have guessed were volcanic but they aren't.

a view of the hills surrounding Cairns from the harbor

The next day we went to a wildlife park and took a tour of some of the forest in an old Army Duck (they run on land and in the water). We saw a very large spider, held a koala and got a picture, petted kangaroos and wallabies, saw a huge crocodile, a wombat and a few other animals. (There are a bunch more pictures of everything on Facebook) We had a pretty excellent lunch that included passion fruit and kiwis.

a wallaby!!

passion fruit flower

Later that afternoon when we got back to the hotel, I wandered over to the organic food store around the corner and found some delicious chocolate. On the way back, a bunch of the other students had started a jam session on the sidewalk outside of the hotel so I went and got my violin and joined in. There wasn't much that we could come up with that everyone knew but it was still nice to relax and play some music with other people. Practicing in the room by myself was starting to get kind of boring.

downtown Cairns

Friday was our free day. Most of the other students had signed up for some sort of adventure or another through the travel agency that booked our tickets.After considering a zipline tour of the rainforest that would have been A$200, I decided to opt for renting a bike and riding around Cairns for the day (A$10). I bicycled around town to the Esplanade and to the Botanical Gardens. There were a lot of really different tress. The Tanks Arts center next to the botanical gardens was pretty neat. It reminded me a lot of REDUX in Charleston. I also visited the huge fresh market that sold everything from clothes to fruits and veggies. I went to the KickArts center and a couple of the local galleries. A trip to the Australian Post brought me to the mall where they also had a BiLo and a Target which I found amusing.