Palm Cove, north of Cairns, was every bit as beautiful as my friend Pam said it would be, though not quite as unspoiled as the beach at Bawaka. I’d booked into the Peppers Beach Resort and Spa because I really did intend to spend a few days relaxing before returning to Sydney. When my room wasn’t ready, I decided to go in search of lunch and on the way passed one of those places that book tours. I decided to just collect a few brochures. Before I checked into my room I had booked the Cairns in a Day tour, an indigenous-inspired cabaret called Flames in the Forest and a three and a half hour spa treatment.

The room was called a lagoon spa room, which means it faced the lagoon and was divided roughly into one third bathroom, one third very large bed and one third balcony with very large spa. It was small but given that I didn’t do much more than sleep and sit in the spa, it was more than adequate.

Next morning I was up at six am to have breakfast and get ready to see Cairns in a day. I was the only tourist from Palm Cove so I rated a limousine. The driver took me to Freshwater Station where I boarded the Scenic Railway to Kuranda. First I visited the railway museum where I learned that Cairns had been losing the harbour competition to Port Douglas where it was easier to transport the gold being mined in the interior. During a long and heavy wet season in 1882, the road from the mines to Port Douglas became impossible to traverse and the good citizens of Herberton nearly starved to death. They began lobbying for a train and Cairns was chosen as the best endpoint for the rail. This explains why I learned about Cairns in school but didn’t hear of Port Douglas till Sheraton built a Mirage hotel there.

The train travels above the Stoney Creek and Barron Gorges and along the way I took photos of everything that looked mildly interesting. We were travelling through rainforest but to me it mostly looked like a sea of green with a river far below. From time to time I took photos of flowering white and red bushes. The falls at Stoney Creek and Barron were beautiful but no more so than a million waterfalls elsewhere. This railway climbs into the mountains via a series of hairpin bends. It cost many lives to build and was a tremendous achievement for the technology of the day, especially when you consider that all the tunnels, including one which was almost half a kilometre, were hand carved. Yet, 100 years later, it is used exclusively for tourism and the safety and nourishment of the hinterland towns is managed in other ways.

Kuranda is built on a hill. It used to be a hippy town and is now a tourist hippy town. I climbed to the main street and began checking out the shops. I had hoped to have time to look through the markets but only managed an art gallery (where they overcharged me $20) and a soap and cosmetics store before I realised it was nearly 11am and time to catch the sky rail back down the mountain so I could be picked up at 12:15 at the bottom. I had thought the sky rail was a large cabin, similar to the one at the Three Sisters in Katoomba and assumed if I missed it, I would miss my connection to the reef. It turned out to be small 4-6 person cabins, similar to a ski lift. These ran continuously and the trip only took half an hour, so I was at the bottom with lots of time to spare and nothing to do but write this story. I would like to have spent more time at Kuranda, so I will just have to go back again, maybe after saving a bit more money.

When he realised I would be travelling in the small cabin alone, the attendant offered to ask another couple to let me travel with them. I was matched with a man about my age and his younger visitor from overseas who he introduced as his mother. When he found out I was a little worried about heights, he promised not to bounce the sky rail cage too much. When we passed through the next stage, the attendant opened the door and asked if we wanted to get out and take a walk. As we left, I suggested that he check that the attendant had closed the door he was sitting next to. He jumped to check it. Got him, I said. I’m not sure he was amused; I think he preferred to be the one with the jokes.

The brochure explained that we were passing over rainforest and which kind it was. On the first bit, they had been replanting rainforest. The second bit was eucalypts and there were freshwater crocodiles, tortoises and waterbirds which I didn’t see. After Barron Falls Station there were mango, hoop pine and tropical fruit trees, as well as Cooper’s tree fern and hard milkwood. Then there were red penda trees, oak and as we got further down, wattle, fig and palm trees. Finally, near the bottom, there were vines and green tree-ant nests. I’m afraid it mostly looked like trees to me, I found coping with my fear of heights and looking at the view across to the ocean far more interesting.

Down at the bottom, I was picked up by a bus which took me and three others to the helicopter base. After safety regulations were explained, we were strapped in and flown out to a platform on the outer reef. I had the front seat next to the pilot, I looked down and noticed what appeared to be a hole at my feet. Better hang on to my camera, I remember thinking, before the driver explained that it was actually clear perspex.

This time I was more comfortable in the helicopter and I could take the time to look at the reef. I’d always assumed it was one long bar of coral, which is stupid, of course it isn’t. I’d just never thought about it before.  There are sections of reef, usually bent in a certain direction, which may have something to do with current, temperature or some other feature influencing reef formation. Possibly it has something to do with the way waves break over coral and deposit nutrients, and so the direction of the bend in the coral is influenced by other coral deposits around it. All I can say for sure is that there were lots of sections each bent in different directions though mostly with the centre of the bend facing out to sea. There are also islands of sand and larger islands with greenery, which vary in size from Green Island to large enough for half a dozen people to have a private picnic. If the island has some greenery, it is not covered at night or by high tide. If it is only sand, it will disappear under the waves from time to time.

I’d thought landing a helicopter on the equivalent of a small wooden pontoon in the middle of the ocean would be difficult but it certainly looked easy. We eased slowly down and were taken on a small boat to a cruise vessel named Osprey V where we had lunch, swam and sat around in the sunshine. I took a ride in a glass-bottomed boat and destroyed another childhood belief when I discovered that the glass was a small viewing area in the middle of the boat, not the entire boat floor. What a relief, I had always worried about what would happen if someone jumped into the boat and broke the glass.

Sadly, there’s a build-up of scum on the glass and so my photos were not clear, even on the vivid setting. I was thinking I might have been better off snorkelling till I realised I would not have been able to take any photos at all.

Once I had seen Cairns I felt more comfortable about spending the last day of my holidays sitting around the pool. I went for a walk on the beach, had a leisurely lunch and a facial and full-body exfoliation to restore all those nutrients my time in the sun had taken out. No, that’s not why my skin looks so good, I inherited good skin from my mother. I just can’t see any harm in helping it whenever I can.

For my final night of holidays I booked dinner at an event called Flames in the Forest. I was picked up from my hotel by a busload of friendly British tourists (mostly English with a smattering of Scottish and an Irish couple). They were doing the grand tour of Australia (Melbourne, Uluru, Cairns and Sydney) and the tour transport company saved money by attaching me to their transport. They were friendly, they know how to drink and have a good time and I was more than pleased to have someone to talk to.

They had already had a few drinks and were very chatty. We drove north to the point where the sea meets the forest and then inland to a point where a line of flames barred the road. We followed a path into a clearing and were served champagne and oysters in their shells. The British thought eating oysters out of their shells was disgusting, but they tried it anyway. After mingling for a while we heard clanging sticks and a painted blackfella emerged from the bush and began talking in an Aboriginal language. Everyone looked suitably puzzled so our blackfella began rubbing his stomach and pointing to where dinner was being served.

Dinner was a three-course meal with prawns for entrée (I had a special dish of gnocchi), meat and fish and panacotta for dessert. Once the dishes had been cleared, our blackfella and his brother came back and addressed us in English. His brother played the didgeridoo while our blackfella, who answered to Gary, began telling a legend of the land that belonged to his tribes.

Before he started, Gary told a few jokes to warm up his audience, as you do, and our British dinner guests, particularly the Irish man sitting next to me, responded in similar jocular fashion, as you do. After all, it was dinner theatre, everyone knows the audience is supposed to participate. It works best when the audience heckles and the success of the entertainment is based in part on how the master of ceremonies manages the heckling.

Unfortunately someone forgot to tell Gary that and he takes his storytelling very seriously. He told our Irish friend to be quiet or leave. It did not go down well. While the audience listened patiently to everything he had to say, they refused to have their photos taken with Gary and his brother. He takes himself way too seriously was what one of the English said to me on the way out.

I love aboriginal legends; I first read them when I was a child because they helped me understand the country in which my European parents chose to live. I think a tent in the middle of the rainforest, with kerosene lamps and a good meal in my stomach, is the perfect place to tell aboriginal stories. But if it’s a serious business, perhaps dinner theatre is not the right format.

We were tired on the bus trip home and there was a storm brewing, so all the way back we were treated to magnificent displays of sheet lightning and momentary glimpses of the beach on one side and the mountains on the other. Home in my hotel room, I had my last spa bath.