The alarm was set to go off well before dawn as we had booked to ride on the Kuranda Skyrail and we needed to depart our campsite by 7:15am to drive to the Skyrail terminal.
As planned, we arrived at the terminal before the scheduled check-in time and most of us received an email giving details of our seating allocation on the train. The Skyrail has different start and finish locations and transport between the terminals for us was by a paid bus ride.
The first part of the trip was a train ride from the Freshwater Station through the rainforest to the terminal at the very touristy town of Kuranda. The trip takes about 90 minutes and passes several waterfalls, crosses a lot of bridges and passes through several tunnels. The train stopped near Barron Falls for photography. Our train today was pulled by a couple of electric diesel engines. In parts, the climb to the destination was steep and spectacular.
Arriving in Kuranda close to 11:30am, we stopped for coffee at the Kuranda Hotel before exploring the town and having lunch. We purchased a couple of items, not souvenirs, before heading back to the Kuranda Hotel for a final drink before the second part of the trip. As had been the case in previous days, the weather was very warm with little cloud and a bright sun.
Kuranda is a town that relies on tourism. The town was very busy with the numbers supplemented by the arrival of a cruise ship and additional passengers on the train and then skyway.
We were booked for 1:15pm on the cable car (gondola) for the return trip at that passes through two stops.
The cableway stretches 7.5 kilometres between Smithfield (Cairns) and Kuranda. There are 32 towers in total and the highest tower stands 40.5 metres high.
Red Peak is Skyrail’s highest point at 545 metres above sea level. The Kuranda Terminal sits at 336 metres and Smithfield (Cairns) Terminal is just 5 metres above sea level.
The cableway was originally installed with 47 gondolas. In 1997, this increased the total number of gondolas to 114. In 2013, Skyrail modified and introduced 11 Diamond View glass floor gondolas.
We got out at the first stop to photograph Barron Falls (we could have stayed on the gondola as we needed to queue again and wait for a vacant car), and it was mandatory to get out at the second stop as we changed to another cableway. The trip down was just short of an hour and we were afforded magnificent views of the area when we passed over the final peak.
We returned to our campsite via an Anaconda and a Lincraft store and enjoyed another happy hour with all our group attending. We need to watch our refrigerator as it was reading -14 and 6 degrees after the side of the caravan where the refrigerator is located was exposed to direct sunlight for the entire day as we had taken down the awning (standing rule to drop the awning if you leave for a long period of time). We also left the air conditioning off for the entire day with the temperature at the front door being 36 degrees before we started to cool the caravan.
A chicken salad for tea followed by the recharging of camera batteries and a night in bed with a late alarm set.