June 16, 2016
The bowling team’s tour of Australia continues with recent graduate Amanda Fry writing about a day that included close encounters with crocodiles and a breathtaking sky rail ride over the mountain rain forest.
G’day mates! Amanda here writing from Down Under. We just finished our third and final day in the beautiful city of Cairns. Like every other day, we have been packed full of adventures and explorations.
We departed from the hotel at 9 a.m. and took an hour long bus ride along the beautiful coast up into the mountain side where we stopped at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures. We took a quick tour to the farm side of the park before heading into a swamp boat and cruising the green, murky, croc infested lagoon!
Our tour guide lured the 3 to 5+ meter crocodiles right next to the boat and gave us a feeding frenzy demonstration. These crocodiles were jumping half way out of the water, just feet from where we were sitting! And that was just the warm up.
We got off the boat and headed to another section of the park that was designated strictly for feeding the saltwater and freshwater crocodiles. During this time, we were able to get some incredible footage of the crocs being hand fed by the workers and intense moments of aggression between some of the animals.
We finished the morning off by exploring the rest of the park, where we got to see other wild animals and pet more kangaroos and wallabies, because who wouldn’t love that? Like the Maru Animal Park in Melbourne, there were opportunities for priceless photos. This time, we got to hold a cute Koala named Kyla, or a baby crocodile named Little Ted. We had a quick lunch at the farm where we had the chance to eat crocodile (if we so wished), before heading to our next adventure.
We took a trip up a windy road to the top of the mountain and reached the town of Kuranda. Although a small town in the top of the rainforest, the souvenir shops did not disappoint, and was a huge hit before we headed back down the mountain.
This time though we took a different route. The town has a skyrail gondola that was built to take travelers from the top of the rainforest to bottom or vise-versa. Along the journey, we made or first stop at Barron Falls where we were able to see the beautiful waterfall, and then got back in the gondola to climb to the top of the mountain at Red Peak, where we could take in the breathtaking landscape of the rainforest as a whole.
The last stop was getting back into Smithfield, but not before we traveled out of the forest to a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean and the mainland.
Our evening was at leisure, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat and enjoyed the rest of or time exploring the night markets and city of Cairns. We are heading off to Sydney tomorrow for our last stop of this once in a lifetime experience, and I cannot thank Vanderbilt enough for providing us with this amazing opportunity!
Signing off for now, but stay tuned to follow the end of our journey!
Cheers mates!
-Amanda Fry
