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Trip to Cairns + Total Solar Eclipse

Gazza

Giga Poster
So, Australia last had a total solar eclipse in 2002 in the South Australian outback town of Ceduna.
I was in year 8 at the time and thought it was pretty cool. At the time I googled that the next one in Australia would be in far north Queensland, and would probably be in my 2nd last or final year of uni (Yes, I was planning on doing Architecture back then even :p )
Far North Queensland, and specifically the city of Cairns is a nice spot, so I thought "hey, might do that".

Fast foward to this semester, and as luck would have it, my final hand for the research unit in was going to be on the day of the eclipse.....Not a worry, I could just get it in a day or two early, get a cheap flight to Cairns and go see it.

Didn't bother getting my arse into gear to book anything till about a month ago, which meant paying close to $400 for flights and struggling to find accomodation. Found a bed at a backpackers, and whilst I'm not opposed to staying in them, you kinda have to be in the mood for it. Regardless, I had no choice, and at least it was only $15 a night.
Figured it would be all worth it, I sort of see witnessing an eclipse as a life experience I should be ticking off.

DAY 1
So come last monday I was working feverishly to get my report done. In the end I got it in by 1am, ready to be up at 4:30am for my flight.

So after a couple of hours sleep mum dropped me at BNE. Annoying because I could only get the early flight, and the rail network doesn't start running till 5am so I couldn't just take the Airtrain.

On the plus side, the new airport link tunnel has opened which speeds up the trip to the airport a bit.
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Beep...$4 in tolls later.
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In the air by 6:30, had a nice sleep in the plane and I was on the ground in Cairns by 9ish.
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Cairns is a bit of a tropical paradise....100,000 people and the northenmost city on the East coast...You can tell even from this google satelite shot what a nice place it is http://goo.gl/maps/0gnrs
Great barrier reef and the coral sea to the east, Daintree rainforest and mountains to the west, the city sort of in the middle, surrounded by sugar cane farms.
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Dumped my bags at the place...Was pretty good actually, newish. I think it used to be a motor inn, but they took out the kitchenettes in each room and replaced them with bunks. Full of Brits, Germans, and Japanese backpackers (Well, the whole town is lol)

I didn't want to rent a car, so hired a bike for the time I was there, and set about exploring the CBD.
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Very leafy and well kept.

Heading along more found the convention center, which looked pretty cool.
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I ended up near the port, and they were redeveloping the waterfront there. It was all closed off (pic taken through the fence) but it looked nice,....maybe for next time. Loved how the playground was like the swiss family robinson treehouse.
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I kept pressing along the foreshore:
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I couldn't check in till 11am, really wanted to go have a sleep, but hey this is fun too.
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There was also a free outdoor swimming pool with lifeguards on the waters edge, look to the edge of the womans head and you can see a number of metal tropical fish on poles (that were fountains) in the distance:
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Lush.
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Eventually I could check in, here is what it was like inside, basically a courtyard with a pool, and an elevated deck under a shade sail with a kitchen, a number of outdoor lounges and the like.
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Had a bit of an afternoon sleep to catch up on what I missed out on the night before.

Later I emerged, For dinner I caught a bus north up to palm cove (15km away and CFB cycling that far) and had dinner up there.
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Was a nice way to end the day.
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I had a thing from the paper which had all the crucial times for tommorow morning, so set my alarm accordingly.
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Gazza

Giga Poster
Re: Cairns + Total Solar Eclipse

DAY 2.

So I got up at 4:30 again. I wanted to cycle about 10km north to Holloways Beachrather than watch the eclipse on the foreshore of Cairns with everyone else...This turned out to be an inspired choice as you will see.

My bike didn't have a light nor a rear flashing light, so hastily downloaded a "disco light" app from Google Play, put my phone in the netting at the back of my backpack and set it to strobe :lol: , and hoped a policeman wouldn't see me.

By the time I got there the streets were already busy, and the takeaway, newsagent and general store had all opened early for everyone. Got myself a drink and locked up my bike at the beach as day was breaking.
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Quite a few there:
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No pro gear from me, just phone camera pics so I couldn't get any amazing shots like a lot of other people would have.
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Oh, and these things are a common sight on beaches in Northern Australia. They have bottles of vinegar in little bollards so it's there for you when you're having fish and chips on the beach.
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I think I took this pic just as the moon first made contact with the sun. All up it takes about 50 mins from first contact to totality.

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Everyone had these gash paper glasses to watch the eclipse with. Not me though, I brought our welding mask...much better way to watch it. A few other people had masks/goggles too.

PS, the vinegar bottles are actually there in case of jellyfish stings. You can tip it on the site of the sting and it rapidly neutralises the toxins, relieving the agony of it and potentially saving a life.

This is what the view was basically like through the mask. The camera did a crap job of capturing it, but when actually looking through it yourself the sun was a very clear yellow disc with a bite taken out of it.
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Looking at the eclipse with a naked eye is dumb anyway, because the brightness of the sun still means it looks like just a bright patch in the sky...you can't actually see the moon shape with the naked eye.

So not long after first contact the clouds moved in the way....arrgh. There was a 30% risk of overcast weather, which threatened to ruin the show. You can see in this pic there is annoying "bridge" of cloud between the two larger masses, and this bridge is bang over the sun :x
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Clouds have now moved leftwards, and an even bigger mass is in the way. 30 mins till totality and a few nervous people about. fkfkfkfkfkfkfkffkaasaffdadsf.
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We might be in luck! Now only 10 mins till totality, and you can still see a wang of cloud hanging down in the way of the sun. Move move move please!
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Woohoo! And with about 4 minutes to spare we were in the clear! Well, as much as we would ever be, still some scattered clouds around, but you could say they were atmospheric (Excuse the pun).
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This was taken just after totality. Hard to capture because the coronal ring shape still glows inwards so the camera still picks it up the sun as if its a ball. You can see what the cloud and horizon was like...almost like something out of a desktop background or what happens if you google image search "cool background".
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Here's one that worked, by putting it into snow/beach mode:
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It was amazing, people were cheering. I reckon standing on a beach surrounded by hundreds of others really is the "right" way to experience something like this. It was pretty dark, and you take your eye protection off to see the coronal ring and the solar flares sparking on the outside.

And as quickly as it began it was over.
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The clouds had cleared up a bit now, so I hung around for the next 40 mins or so and watched the moon progressivley move out of the way through the mask (Since cloud prevented this during the first half)
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There was a drunk guy in a sleeping bag who had been there since when I arrived. I dunno wether I should have woken him so he didn't miss a once in a lifetime event (I did walk past and he was kinda only half asleep anyway, so he must've had some idea what was going on)....meh. He didn't get up during totality anyway, maybe he watched it lying down.
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And now the beach was empty of people and you realise its still very early in the morning.
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And then I cycled back into Cairns:
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I went back to my accomodation and had a sleep till about lunch, then got some Chicken Katsudon for lunch, rang my sister and told her all about it.

Cairns is a popular destination for Japanese tourists since it's one of the closest bits of Australia to them, and is a bit of a microcosm of the sorts of things internationals tend to want to see here (Eg Animals and Scenery)

As a result, are a lot of gift shops and businesses catering to the Japanese.

But In one arcade I found a Japanese convenience store (win) and bought a crapload of stuff cos I could, including some japanese made Peperocini pasta sauce for dinner that night. (Yes, Japanese made italian food)
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Anyway, saw the GOO.N nappies that Furie had as his signature a while back:
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Also got a bottle of Ramune. It's lemonade, but basically you undo the top and get out a plastic plunger:
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You then take the plunger, invert it, and push down hard, and this forces a marble to drop out (breaking the seal) and into the top chamber of the bottle. Totally pointless, but cool.. Except you cant just put the lid back on like a normal bottle.
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I also got a Japanese icecream bar, which was a layer of wafer on the outside, with vanilla ice cream and a slab of chocolate in the middle. Nice:
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In the cool of the evening (It's transitioning from the dry season to the wet season, so still quite warm and humid) I went for a cycle to Mt Sheridan in the southern suburbs of Cairns, but basically only saw works for the Cairns southern motorway project lol.

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Down in Mt Sheridan I bought some reef shoes...I was going to need them the next day for a certain activity I had booked in the afternoon :wink:
 

Gazza

Giga Poster
Re: Cairns + Total Solar Eclipse

Well, cant stand the notion of an unfinished TR, so I'll see what I can do :lol:

Anyway, the previous day I realised that I should do at least one proper Cairns touristy thing, so went ahead and booked a whitewater rafting trip on the Baron River. I was hoping it would only be about $100, but turned out to be $130....You pay a $25 levy to pay for the release of water down the river (Since there is a hydro power station upstream)

It wasn't until 2pm though, so I slept in and faffed around in the middle of Cairns and had a pub lunch.
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Come 2pm I was picked up by the minibus, it was is only about a 15 min trip out of town, much of it spent filling out indemnity forms and signing my life away.

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So this was the best pic I could get of the river on the way up:
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At the top it was lifejacket and helmet time:
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If you didn't have appropriate footwear you could rent crocs for $5. Spited them all by buying reef sandals for the same price the night before:
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I didn't get any pics of me rafting. They had one of those photo-takeyourpictureandchargeyouheapstoretriveitlater-grapher....$80 for the CD of photos D: .

As for the experience itself, it was only grade 3 rapids, so perhaps equal in intensity to a really big rough rapids ride, except it lasts for 2 hours, and you have to paddle across the flat water. Lots of cool waterfalls to go down, and we never fell out. We did something called 'surfing' where you paddle into the bottom of a waterfall, and the water flow keeps sucking you in and spitting you out. The rafts actually have holes in the bottom, so they never 'fill' with water, allowing you to do this...It was really poweful and you got well and truly blasted by the water.
We also did something called the "Titainic" on one of the waterfalls....Basically at the bottom was a smooth upwardly sloped rock, and you'd approach it fast, slide up it, then skid back down (kinda like a boomerang coaster lol)
Part way along we all jumped out of the rafts and swum in the river a bit too.

Near the end on the lowest part of the river there are some crocs, so we just had to slap the water with our paddles to scare off any that might have been there...no swimming on this leg of the trip!
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The rafting trip concluded around 6pm, so I went and got dinner and chilled out a bit on the deck at the accomodation.

Day 4.

-Last day!
I started off with another walk, but noticed something...The development at the port that had been fenced off no longer was...curiosity got the better of me
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Not sure what the space was for, but it was nicely done:
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Being a waterfront development, cue the old cranes and buoys used as sculptures:
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Lots of recycled wood shelters etc around
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The Swiss Family playground still looked cool :)
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Turns out the whole thing had only opened that morning, so a couple of local news crews were there:
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Ok, one last archi shot.
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Some of the locals were finding the sun a bit hot though:
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I hadn't been paying attention, and only rented a bike for 3 days, not 4, so was kinda limited on what I could do.

That said, there was one thing I wanted to check out. I don't really count coasters, but I do try and get water park creds....there was a small one down at Edmonton that had only opened fairly recently (There had been other water slides on the site, built in the 80s or something, but they decided to redo it.

So, onto the bus, but not this one:
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The trip kinda wound through the south western suburbs. Housing has gradually overtaken the sugarcane fields, but the interesting thing is they left in the cane tramways (still used to transport cane from the fields to the mill) so in the middle of ordinary streets were random rail crossings:
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Eventually I made it to Edmonton...Had to faff for about half an hour because the park didn't open til 4pm (for twilight sliding)

In the meantime, checked out the peacocks roaming in the parklands
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Obligatory entrance shot:
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The place was called Sugarworld water park, only pretty small, but had a 4 lane racer with heaps of air, only did it a few times because with air comes elbow slamming as you land back on the slide
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Took this pic of the kids bit before the place opened because im not a pedo:
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There was also a red body slide, and a yellow raft slide:
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Only stuck around an hour or so because the place was quiet and that was more than enough to do everything.

After that it was basically time to pick up my bags and fly back to Brisbane...And work the next day :x
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
That was really cool actually Gazza. It's kind of odd seeing part of a foreign country that's local to you, but not - if you see what I mean?

I watched the total eclipse here in Cornwall and it was something I really enjoyed making the effort for. Though there was far too much New Age nonsense about the whole thing back then :lol:

And I do love Goo.n nappies :)
 

davidm

Strata Poster
Nice OT report...

I was last in Cairns ~10 years ago and that waterfront area was just a big muddy mess - good to see they have eventually made something of a feature of it (think it had been developed to an extent in the years since I was there... what you were seeing was the next phase?). Always thought it was very odd for this ocean-side town to not have made much of the "beach area" (that it doesn't really have!)

When the solar eclipse hit the UK in 1999, I watched it from my works car park. You have me beat there I think. ;-)
 

tks

Strata Poster
CAIRNS <33333333333

I fricking love Palm Cove, Double Island, VINEGAR <3333. I went back in 2009, most amazing trip anywhere! The rainforest is just immense.
 
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