Kuranda Scenic Railway tour

A luxury air-conditioned bus (apparently you don’t call them coaches here in Oz) collected us from the Shangri La Hotel at 8am and we enjoyed a first scenic tour of most of the hotels in Cairns before arriving at Freshwater Station 15 minutes out of town. This was like stepping back in time, a very quaint and pretty station with lots of trees and flowers and a bit of a museum thing going on about how this railway was built by demand of the gold rush in the late 1860’s. We enjoyed a quick tour before Alec realised that there was a “GOLD class” that we had not been told about, so he quickly tried to upgrade us, but alas, they were fully booked today, so we would have to sit with the masses (and save ourselves another $45 per head for the privilege!) We ascending, with some difficulty, the ladder that led us to carriage number 9 where we seemed to be crammed in like sardines and sitting backwards against the direction of travel. This doesn’t suit me so at the first opportunity we changed carriages to find an abundance of seats in the next one down, but none by a window. Oh well we could muscle in when there were decent photo opportunities!

to be completed