Jon Bear and Carlyn Girl's small adventures: Cairns Holiday Story Part 3

Paul and I were in much better spirits today after a good night sleep. Today we decided to explore more of Cairns City. The first stop we went to was the Cairns Botanical Gardens. We love being outdoors and walking around gardens. Almost every city has botanical gardens which is usually free and features exotic and native plants arranged into beautiful gardens.

The Cairns Botanical Gardens has 4000 tropical plants from Australia and around the world. There are also native animals that live in the park such as the bush turkey and possums. Bush turkeys are actually common around Queensland and some even live in people’s backyards. Some people think of them as pest because they are foragers who dig up the ground with their feet so it can be hard to grow things with them around. They are not good eating either, not that you are allowed to eat them. In olden days people would eat them but they have tough meat.

There were a lot of tourists at the park that we had to be patient about taking photos and not walking into other people’s photos. The park was like a rainforest with lots of trees, ferns and exotic flowers. I had two Chinese tourists ask me in Chinese where things were but I couldn't answer them because I don’t speak Chinese.

My favourite part of the gardens was the Lowland Swamp Forest which had a long boardwalk through the swamp. We weren’t expecting the walk to be so long, we thought the pathway would eventually lead out to the entrance that we came in but we ended up at the Freshwater Lake. I asked Paul if he wanted to see the Saltwater Creek but he said once you have seen one lake, you have seen them all. So we decided to exit the park and go to the city.

We had lunch at McDonalds in Cairns City. We didn’t pay for wifi at our hotel so it was an excellent time to use the free wifi from McDonalds. Afterwards, we went to the Cairns Regional Art Gallery. The art gallery doesn’t allow for photography so I didn’t take any pictures. The gallery was doing exhibits on Indigenous artwork and photography from some celebrated photographer. The gallery use to be the courthouse so had a big wooden staircase with marble flooring.

When we finished looking at the gallery, we decided to go the library. The library was near where our car was parked and would be the last stop of the day. The library is a beautiful building. The library is just like any other library inside, rows of books and lots of desks and chairs. There were many local people as well as tourists. We just browsed the shelves and read a snippet or two before going home.

My other adventures

6 comments:

Bethany Carson22 June 2015 at 04:44
The garden looks and sounds like a beautiful place to tour! I also like the library building! Sounds like you had a good vacation.
Paige25 June 2015 at 11:24
Wow, the botanical gardens look beautiful and exotic (at least to my American eyes :) ). This sounds like a fun day.
jon bear29 June 2015 at 13:41
Much of my family loves gardens. My sister Heather and sister in law Shirley both have beautiful flower/plant gardens in their yards and I was just telling my Mom the other day that if I ever get a place of my own with a nice yard I want her input on my landscaping choices as far as trees/plants and flowers. I think she makes great choices and her back yard looks lovely.

My oldest brother Robert also keeps a pretty elaborate vegetable garden that I reap some of the yield from each year.

I'd have liked to see the Cairns Botanical Gardens. The Sonnenberg Gardens, the Saratoga, NY Park Gardens and the Botanical Gardens in Washington D.C. are some of the beautiful garden tours that I've been fortunate to go on.