Wonders Down Under

Wish you were here. The weather’s fine. Tomorrow it will be partly fine, but it’s expected to become fine and humid.

“Fine,” I deduce from the Australian weather reports, is the equivalent of what we Americans call “fair.” I thought I knew how to speak Australian; I’ve seen the Crocodile Dundee movies and eaten at Outback Steakhouse. But when I greeted our hotel desk clerk with “G’dye, mite,” he merely paused, swallowed and said, “Sorry, not even close.”

Still, I was better than fine, because I was doing essentially two vacations in one--reef and rain forest--and I was doing it in a place that, although tropical and exotic, is reminiscent of a Robert Young and Donna Reed America.

My wife, Janice, and I were here in August as part of a two-week, three-city package that also took us to Sydney and Brisbane. I don’t think I would have selected four days in Cairns had we not purchased a package that included it. But we soon were glad we had come.

To imagine where Cairns is, think of a map of the United States flipped over so that Maine is in the south. The upside-down “Florida” is the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, and Cairns is about where you would put Orlando.

“Cairns” isn’t pronounced the way it looks, of course, this being Australia. The way Queenslanders say it, you don’t hear the “r.” But it is English. You don’t need Berlitz lessons to visit Australia. And that’s the appeal of the country: comfortable and strange at the same time.

Many guidebooks relegate Cairns, a town of 100,000, to that awkward category of “not very interesting, but a good jumping-off point for places that are.” Nevertheless, it is one of the major tourist destinations in Australia, attracting 1.5 million visitors annually.

You may not have heard much about it because you have heard instead of what it’s close to: the Great Barrier Reef.

Cairns can’t claim all of the reef. It extends 1,250 miles from the Tropic of Capricorn to New Guinea, and it has an area about equal to Arizona’s. It’s not just a big, long undersea wall either; it’s actually more than 2,000 reefs and islands, all formed from the skeletons of coral polyps.

But the reef snuggles in close to the coast--as close as 20 miles--near Cairns, whose international airport distributes divers, snorkelers and honeymooners to small resort communities that in turn put them aboard boats with a magnum of sunscreen and ship them out to the reef. A good many of the visitors are Aussies, who in August come north where it’s warmer. (The seasons are opposite from those in the U.S.; when it’s summer in the U.S., it’s winter Down Under.)

We boarded a catamaran near Port Douglas, 30 miles north of Cairns. The hourlong bus trip to the port had been a bit of a trial for me: The Australians apparently share the British love for highway roundabouts, and I concluded that they deliberately tried to make us carsick so seasickness would seem a blessing. In its defense, the road was curved beguilingly along the water, permitting “ooh”-worthy views of the Coral Sea and the beaches south of Port Douglas.

I was surprised at the size of the catamaran. I was expecting something with room for six people and a beer cooler. Instead, the fleet of five catamarans operated by Quicksilver Connections could be the navy of a small nation. The vessels, about 115 feet long, can haul 300 to 400 passengers, and, powered by water-jet engines, they thrust through the water at speeds of up to 40 knots (about 46 mph).

It took 90 minutes to reach the Great Barrier Reef, but the trip was smooth. The catamarans are called “Wave Piercers,” designed to go through the waves rather than over them. So the boat trip was less bumpy than the bus trip, and although seasickness medication was available, neither Janice nor I needed it, and I don’t think anyone else did either.

Our base for the next few hours was the Agincourt Reef Platform. On approach, it resembled a giant card table set up in the middle of the ocean. How were we all going to fit on that?

It’s bigger than it appears, though--about 160 by 75 feet and 230 tons--and can accommodate all the passengers who arrive by Wave Piercer.

The relatively tame water in which the platform rests is a pale, transparent green, but not far away it turns Ty-D-Bol blue. There was a line of real waves out there, foaming white where they collide with the coral barrier. On the other side the bottom reportedly drops down more than a mile.

You don’t have to know how to swim to appreciate the reef; instead, you have only to descend the stairs into the “basement.” The lower level of the platform has underwater windows that allowed us to see the coral formations, the inquisitive fish looking at the inquisitive people and the kicking legs of dozens of snorkelers.

We then boarded a 30-passenger semi-submersible boat, half in the water, half out. We sat in a long, narrow row, Roman galley style, with thick windows on either side. The skipper skillfully guided us through little notches in the reef, never damaging the precious live coral and, more important from my perspective, never breaking one of those windows.

During our half-hour trip, we glided over staghorn coral and brain coral, looking just like their names suggest. We also saw fish in Busby Berkeley formations. Their intense colors confirmed for me that there must be a creator and that he must spend his weekends painting.

Back on the platform, Janice prepared to do what she does well--swim--and I to do what I do well--go to the buffet. The platform is essentially a large picnic shelter and has no kitchen, so the catamaran had transported supplies, using its winch to lower huge containers of cold food to the assembled throng.

As I dined, surveying my companions, it occurred to me that besides the many nicknames Australia already has (Down Under, Oz, Sunburnt Country), everyone had missed an obvious motto: Australia, Land of Dorky Hats. Big, wide-brimmed contraptions that tie on, Paul Hogan specials with crocodile teeth in the band, a leather bush hat called the “oiled squashy.” Australia is a land preoccupied with not frying the noggin. For good reason too: The ozone layer has thinned, and Australians have among the highest skin cancer rates in the world.

Janice, wearing a wetsuit and two coats of SPF 45, was mask-down in the water, paddling above the coral, prying into the home life of fish. Another of the group members, who declined the offer of a wetsuit because she wanted to “get some color,” certainly got some, and the color was scarlet.

Janice had taken an optional tour, led by a marine biologist, that went by boat to a quieter section of ocean away from the splashing of neophytes, where they could view sea cucumbers, multiple configurations of coral and clownfish, which change sex depending on the reproductive needs of their community.

Back on the platform Janice invited me to join her group as they watched the underwater video that a crewman made of their trip. There was my mermaid wife, holding a sea cucumber and never once uttering, “Ewww, gross!”

The Quicksilver cat took us back to Port Douglas, where we chose boat rather than bus to return us to Cairns. We found a spot on the afterdeck that sheltered us from the breeze as the coast slipped by. I could see why the area is popular with honeymooners, and even old married couples clung together, watching the sun set over the silhouettes of the trees.

Back in Cairns we searched for dinner. Cairns may be mainly a jumping-off point, but it’s a good place for dinner once you’ve jumped back. Its small downtown is home to cuisines as diverse as Italian and Thai. If there is little uniquely Australian cuisine to be found here, the Red Ochre Grill satisfies the curiosity of the gastronomically adventurous with crocodile fritters, emu pate and kangaroo steak. “Bush tucker,” our guidebook called it. The chef also uses native-grown seasonings to enliven otherwise more traditional dishes--eucalyptus salmon, for example. It was one of the best meals we had in Australia.

Cairns’ rectangular layout of low-rise, workaday buildings and its informal pace are reminiscent of an American Midwestern town. Until tourists discovered Far North Queensland, it was a somnolent seacoast village that depended on the mining and sugar cane industries nearby. Nevertheless, today Cairns definitely is aware of its role in tourism: The arcades and waterside avenues are filled with souvenir stands.

Earlier in our trip, when I told a fellow tourist we would be visiting Cairns, he just muttered something like “T-shirt capital of Australia.” But I wasn’t disappointed that Cairns wasn’t Monaco, although it does have a casino.

My only disappointment was the absence of animals. Apparently misled by the books of my childhood, I expected to see koalas in every tree, kangaroos loitering at street corners. Perhaps that is true somewhere on the continent, but here on the east coast, while the famous beasts are present, they are reclusive, and you may have to go to a zoo or special park to see them.

Thus a trip to Kuranda, 22 miles northwest of Cairns, is more for scenery than for wildlife. Kuranda is the terminus for a railroad built in the late 19th century to get supplies from Cairns to the miners and loggers of the Atherton Tableland through territory that was nearly impenetrable. Those were 22 difficult miles, climbing through jungle and along deep gorges, and construction took five years and required 15 tunnels.

We appreciated that task when we went to Kuranda by train, a creaky old railroad with wood coaches. For the first few miles of the trip the train rumbled authentically along through the suburban backyards of the flood plain, but then the Kuranda Range appeared, and we began to creep a thousand feet upward through the trees.

As the coastline receded, we focused on the rocks and gorges and rain forest greenery, none of which would lend itself to easy railroad construction. At Stoney Creek, high in the mountains, we curved around a bend so big that we could see nearly the whole train and yell “G’dye!” through the open windows to our mates at the other end. Much of the curve was on a bridge, held up by spindly legs in front of a rock wall against which a small waterfall splashed.

In the 1960s, hippies adopted Kuranda. We still could see some traces of that era--the back-to-nature feel of the craft shops, the sense of community in the flea markets--but, mostly, Kuranda’s hippies had become Kuranda’s entrepreneurs. Wood crafters, leather toolers, potters--Kuranda is a knickknack and bric-a-brac mother lode. While some of the T-shirt and souvenir ashtray stuff we could find just as easily in the U.S., Australian aboriginal art tempted me. But then, what exactly does one do at home with a 5-foot wood didgeridoo? Start an Australian band?

Instead of buying, we ate. We found the Veg Out Cafe, an excellent vegetarian restaurant (count on a hippie village to get veggie cooking right), and for about $10 we dined on falafel and Malaysian-style noodles, accompanied by fruit shakes. We felt virtuous: We would observe the animals, thank you, rather than eat them.

Not that we would eat butterflies anyway. We had a choice of three venues for spying on animals--an aviary, the Noctarium (a mini-zoo featuring bats, spiny anteaters and other Australian nocturnal animals) and the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary--and we chose butterflies.

Soon we were in a warm, gymnasium-size room filled with greenery and flying swatches of color. A spunky young guide explained the rigors of butterfly life: all those metamorphoses from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult. And for what? For 24 hours of sex, a few weeks of bragging about it, then death. But at least they get to look good.

The Cairns birdwing butterfly looks cut from green silk. The Ulysses butterfly is black when viewed from below, but electric blue from above. One butterfly landed on Janice’s head and refused to leave; others alighted fearlessly on her hand. Butterflies seemed to love her. None of them was interested in me.

Kuranda lies in the heart of the rain forest and is a biologist’s fantasy because of the continent’s unique geological history. Australia has species of plants and animals you can’t see elsewhere--giant fig trees, koalas, platypuses--adapting to their respective environments. Somewhere back in time, Australia broke away from the other continents and followed its own evolutionary agenda, boogieing to its own biological beat. One of the best ways to view the forest--particularly if, like us, you have limited time--is from above. A Skyrail Cableway gondola car took us high above ground, and we skimmed along, eye to eye with the treetops. We saw giant palms, vines, ferns and mistletoe. At 150 feet, the red penda trees are so tall they should have red beacons.

The 4.7-mile ride is a three-hop journey, and we stopped at transfer stations for long-shot views of gorgeous gorges, close-ups of the rain forest vegetation and extreme close-ups of the bugs (little ant railroads running up the tree trunks) that live in it.

A bus gathered us up at the bottom of the mountain and took us back to Cairns. Rather than dining out on our last night, we shopped Woolworth’s (in Cairns it’s a supermarket) for fresh bread, salami, cheese and Shiraz wine for a picnic in our room at the Cairns Colonial Club. The picnic was delicious, simple but satisfying.

Like Australia. Back in the States, I longed for the innocent comfort and the scenery we had found here, and in my yearning, I savored the memory of the reef, the rain forest and those fine, fine days Down Under.

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Guidebook: Australia’s Environs

Getting there: From LAX, connecting flights (change of planes) are offered to Cairns on Qantas, Varig, Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, Thai Airways and Air New Zealand. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,946.

Visas are required, but they are easily obtained. For information, contact the Australian Consulate-General, 2049 Century Park East, 19th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90067- 3121; (310) 229-4800, fax (310) 277-5620. U.S. citizens often are eligible for electronic visas that can be granted virtually immediately. See www.austemb.org/DIMA/visitor.htm.

Telephones: To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (international dialing code), 61 (country code for Australia), 7 (area code for Queensland) and the local number.

Where to stay: Many packages include resort hotels just outside downtown Cairns, within easy taxi or courtesy bus range.

We stayed at Cairns Colonial Club Resort, 18-26 Cannon St., 4053-5111, fax 4053- 7072, www.rihgacolonialclub.com.au. The resort, popular with tour packagers, does not have a beach (Cairns hotels don’t; you’ll have to go north of town for that) but does have a pool and other amenities. Typical rack rates for a double begin at about $77 if booked independently.

There are many hotels and guest houses within downtown Cairns. Dominating the waterfront is the Radisson Plaza, Pierpoint Road in the Pier Marketplace complex, 4031-1411 (in the U.S., [800] 333-3333), fax 4031-3226, www.radisson.com. Doubles begin at about $121.

Where to eat: Red Ochre Grill, 43 Shields St., Cairns; 4051-0100. The place for “bush foods” plus more conventional steak and seafood. About $40 per person, including wine and dessert.

Verdi, 66 Shields St., Cairns; 4052-1010. Pizza from a wood-burning oven, pasta; about $20 per couple for a big pizza and great regional beer.

Veg Out Cafe, 24 Coondoo St., #5, Kuranda; 4093-8483. Lunch only, vegetarian; you can feel virtuous without sacrificing flavor. Less than $10 per person for noodle dishes and fruit drink.

For more information: For information on Kuranda, try www.kuranda.org.

Australian Tourist Commission, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 1920, Los Angeles, CA 90067; (800) 369-6863, fax (661) 775- 4448, www.australia.com.

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Jerry V. Haines is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.