canadian_turtle | Queensland recap #8: Cairns & Green Island

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Great Barrier Reef

March 23: I went on a trip to Green Island, the closest island to Cairns. The boat journey lasted for about an hour or so but I hardly noticed as I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I got onboard (I can't help it! I had to get up so early for all the trips and such for the past week).

When we got to the island the first thing I did was go to the beach to snorkel again. I had had such a great time snorkelling on the Whitsundays that I was really eager to do it again. I didn't think I'd like it so much, thinking I'd hardly be able to see anything under the water without my glasses but I had been wrong and the things I had seen were so amazing I just had to do it again. This time I actually had gotten prescription goggles so I was able to see even more under the water.

The coral around Green Island wasn't as great as on the Whitsundays (the bottom was for the large part covered in sea grass instead) but the fish were more spectacular. The first thing I saw was a starfish and that was quite cool as I hadn't seen that before. I also saw heaps of brightly coloured fish again and at one point I followed two fairly large fish (about 40 centimetres long) and suddenly ended up in a swarm of those fish, which was an amazing experience. They were just quietly swimming through the water and around me as if they didn't even notice me.

After that I had a quick walk around the island to see what else there was to do. And it turned out it wasn't a whole lot. I had planned to do the complete walk around the island at least but I didn't have enough time in the morning so I just wandered around part of it.

In the afternoon I first went on a half hour trip in a semi-submarine over the Great Barrier Reef, which gave me kind of the same views as when snorkelling but without getting wet and with the opportunity to take pictures. We saw much better coral though as we were further out in the ocean and combined with the commentary over the intercom it was very interesting. Towards the end of the ride they threw some fish food in the water around our boat and heaps of fish came swimming around us, from big silver ones to tiny black and white striped ones. We also had a few fish that sucked themselves stuck against the windows of our boat which looked very funny.

After that trip I did a likewise one in a glass-bottom boat (the other one had glass surrounding us too, but this one wasn't a semi-submarine). We saw for the most part the same fish and coral as we did when on the semi-submarine, the commentary was slightly different though and made it worth while.

The sucker fish seen from the semi-submarine

The glass-bottom boat

Green Island

In between all the trips in North Queensland I spent my time in Cairns where I had a surprisingly good time. Everybody had told me beforehand there wasn't much to do in the city and it would be quite boring to spend time there but I found it quite the opposite. Maybe because I'd been in Hervey Bay just before and that was seriously boring ;)

But anyway, the people in my shared house were truly awesome. I arrived at the same time as a girl from Ireland called Rachel and we had a good time chatting and watching movies together. There were also two guys living there called Trys and Steve and they were super kind too. Trys made dinner one night (a kind of giant pie with kangaroo meat in it and veggies which was delicious!) and he also dropped me off at the airport when I left for Cairns.

The city itself was nice too and while I basically only had a day to check it out I found it wasn't enough time to see and do everything I had wanted to. Random pictures from Cairns: