Cairns and Cyclone Kirrily

While Cyclone Kirrily may not have been big news in the rest of the world, it’s been the top of the news here for days now. It made landfall south of Cairns last night (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/ja…) We’d been watching the forecast to determine whether our flight from Brisbane to Cairns would be cancelled or delayed. When we got up this morning, the flight was on schedule and we felt relieved. It’s a two-and-a-half hour flight so we arrived in Cairns in the early afternoon.

Cairns is the city closest to the Great Barrier Reef and launchpad for most excursions to the reef. Despite the flight proceeding, we knew there might be a chance that our boat trip to the reef might be canceled because of wind. Sure enough, it was. We have now rearranged things to hopefully take a trip to the reef on Sunday instead of tomorrow. Fingers crossed. We leave here on Monday, so if Sunday doesn’t happen we’ll be out of luck.

Once we managed to rearrange things, we set out to explore the city of about 165,000 which is a tourist town. Hotels, casinos, restaurants. There is quite a lovely waterfront and boardwalk. We had dinner at a beachfront restaurant, walked the boardwalk and went to the casino to cool off. We’re in a tropical area so it’s hot and humid here - it was 36 Celsius with 89 per cent humidity. 😫Read more