What a contrast to yesterday morning! Today it is very grey and wet. After breakfast we set off for the Skyrail, a 7.5 km cableway that runs over the tropical forest of the Barron Gorge National Park. On approaching the base station at Smithfield we wondered whether there should be a plan B for today as the cloud appeared to be very low over the mountains but we would in fact see the cable cars running up and over the mountain so we persevered.
We had intended to take a return journey on the Skyrail, but at the desk we were offered the alternative of returning on the Kuranda Railway, which although not now steam hauled, provides a very different view of the forest and national park, with coach transfer back from Freshwater Station to our car at Smithfield.
We chose to take the Diamond View Skyrail, a glass bottomed gondola, which meant we got a view directly down over the forest. There was cloud but the forest was still very beautiful and looking down through the glass floor provided a unique perspective.
We alighted at Red Peak and took the short ranger guided boardwalk which was interesting because he provided additional information about the trees, ferns and bushes we were seeing including Aboriginal uses. We reboarded the Skyrail which then took us mostly downhill across the Barron River where we got an ariel view of the falls we had observed on Saturday and onto the terminus at Kuranda where we hoped to make use of their free wifi.
Although our iPads were able to identify the signal, they refused to connect and as we had to catch the train at 1530, we opted to buy a snack from the station tea rooms which we ate sitting at a table on the platform which had been transformed into a tropical garden. It was certainly very different to the heritage station platforms we are used to being on in the UK, though the same care, attention and enthusiasm seemed present.
The journey to Freshwater was illustrated by an audio commentary including details about the features we were passing and of the building of the railway which was an amazing engineering feat begun in 1886 and when completed was 37 kilometres long with 15 hand made tunnels, 55 bridges and 98 curves. There was a stop at Barron Falls but the cloud was so low as to almost completely obscure them though the sound of the water was powerful. There were a number of smaller falls en route, an amazing curve built on a trestle bridge passed one of these at which a celebratory dinner was held in the year of the railway's opening but speeches were impossible due to the noise of the water!
At Freshwater Station we left the train for our coach transfer back to our car at the Skyrail terminal at Smithfield the we returned to our apartment. Whilst the weather had not been ideal, the cloud was very low and there were a couple of heavy showers, we did not actually get wet at any time.
We dined on potato and leak soup followed by a beef salad accompanied by suitable beverages, though Lesley abstained as the cold I had she now appears to have caught and is taking some tablets that probably would not mix well with alcohol. We looked at even more brochures of services offering Barrier Reef trips and finally chose one which we determined to book tomorrow.
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