Cairns to Port Douglas

Carol is presenting at a Permaculture Convergence (!) in Kuranda, and invited me along for the ride.  Wicked Vans were recommended as offering a good deal to Convergence attendees, so we dcided to hire one for a week and make a holiday of the trip.

We took the airport shuttle bus into Cairns, which dropped everyone off where they wanted to go, so we had quite an enjoyable tour of Cairns before we were dropped at Wicked Vans.

The characteristic of Wicked Vans is that they have hand painted murals on the outside of them, and also grafitti slogans, so of them quite rude.  Ours has a painting of the indigenous boxer Ron Richards, who was commemorated at Purga near Ipswich earlier this year, so its slogans are about boxing, which isn't too bad.  Still, people are generally surprised to see two mature ladies hopping out of it everywhere, and its a great conversation starter.

Firstly, we drove to Carol's permaculture friend and co-author of one of her books, Janet, who lives in the hills a bit west of Cairns, in a spot that was a bit hard to find.  Janet lives in a Balinese-inspired house with a magical tropical garden with brilliant blue Ulysses and vibrant Cairns Birdwing butterflies fluttering about everywhere.  They were extremely difficult to photograph, especially as it was raining on and off, so this was the best I could do:

The Cairns Birdwing butterfly is Australia's largest, with a wingspan of up to 16 cm.  The other side of the lower wing is a brilliant emerald green, but I could only catch them when they had landed.

The other side of the Ulysses butterfly's wings is a startling iridescent blue (you can just see a glimpse of it here) but once again they were too quick for me to catch in flight. 

Then we drove up to Pt Douglas, to visit another of Carol's friends.  The road north of  Cairns is very pretty, with mountains on one side, and the sea on the other.  Pt Douglas is a resort village and very relaxed.