The Great Tropical North Queensland Adventure Begins

Today is the start of a a great 10 day visit to Tropical North Queensland. I will be taking part of my family with me to explore this wonderful part of Australia. There is some degree of excitement about this trip, as it will be only the second time for me, and the first time for my family to visit this part of Australia. We will be staying in various hotels in Cairns and hope to explore the Great Barrier Reef, the hinterland, and get up to Cape Tribulation.

There are a variety of means to get to get to Cairns in Queensland from Muswellbrook in NSW. We could have hopped into our car and driven the 2,228 klm in 26 hours of non-stop driving through Tamworth, Moree, Goodiwindi, Roma, Emerald, Charters Towers, and Townsville. Or we could have boarded a train in Muswellbrook today at 13.06am arriving in Brisbane at 6.30am tomorrow (a total of 17.22 hours with a wait of 4.40 hours wait in Maitland). The Tilt Train departs Brisbane at 1am and arrives in Cains at 6.20pm, adding another 18.20 hrs of train travel. Only trouble is that the Tilt Train only operates on Tuesdays and Saturdays, so it was not a possibility on this trip.

Considering the lengthy times of car and train travel, we opted to fly to Cairns from Sydney. This involved a 4 hr train trip to Sydney, then a 3 hour evening flight to Cairns. Rather than a full service carrier, we chose one of the low cost carriers. I guess you get what you pay for. The most annoying part of the trip was the broken light above my seat, which meant that I could not read the newspaper I took with me to pass the time. It makes you wonder about the quality of the maintenance of the major items of the plane such as the engine and flight controls if they do not keep an eye on the little things on the plane like interior lights.

We chose the basic flight only, and did not take up the  meal, entertainment, comfort and stowed baggage options. The cabin crew were efficient in completing their tasks, but seemed to have an aversion to smiling or letting the warmth of their personalities shine through. They were seen rarely seen on the 3 hour flight, apart from selling the add-ons at the start of the flight and collecting at the end of the flight.

We left the coldness of NSW and arrived to the warmth of Queensland at the Cairns Airport. After a short taxi ride to our hotel in Cairns our Tropical North Queensland adventure had started. Over the next few days I will be writing about some of the activities we will do and places we will visit while here, so keep reading.