Walking around Cairns

Sunday 20 September… The WiFi works here at Lake Placid so we spent most of last night catching up with the blog and photos. We haven’t been so late for bed since Vanessa was here! No news on the letting of our cottage, it is beginning to get a bit desperate as we can’t afford to run 2 homes. We wonder are things really that bad in the U K, there has been little sign of recession here in Australia, it just seems to have passed them by.
Our niece Rachel lives here in Northern Queensland and we visited her last known address this morning which is only 10 mins away from where we are staying but here wasn’t anyone at home. We left a note with our phone number and email, we will have to wait and see if she contacts us. We then drove into Cairns city and had a job to park, it was so busy. It’s 6 years since we were here and we were intrigued to see how much it had changed bearing in mind a major part of the esplanade was under reconstruction in 2003. They have made a superb job of it and have created and enormous lagoon for people to swim in, with 2 lifeguards in attendance. There isn’t a beach in Cairns city, only mangrove and mudflat so it is a big hit and well used. There has been much building of course and it took us ages to find the Irish Bar we used before. What with the skill of the navigator and the pilots’ nose and instinct we managed to find it just after opening time! We had had a good scout round town beforehand muttering things like “ well that wasn’t there before” and “I’m sure that pub’s on this street” A couple of beers went down well. Altogether we were not disappointed with Cairns it’s lovely, busy city, multi-cultural to say the least and it’s such a relief to escape from the bloody boring grey nomads!