Coming to Cairns

What a 6am flight out of Melbourne looks like.

Sunday morning started bright and early. After getting home at midnight from the Phillip Island tour the night before, and getting to bed at 1am after retrieving the lost piece of luggage from Emily and Adam’s place,we had a 6am flight to catch to Cairns. Imagine the Dill family traipsing across the park in pitch black darkness (with six pieces of luggage) on the way to my apartment at 4am. Then they pressed the wrong buzzer (yes, at 4am) and woke some other poor soul up at that ungodly hour. They finally got it right, and we all caught a taxi to the airport and flew off to tropical Cairns.

Trinity Beach

We arrived to tropical breezes and a warm 85 degree temperature. The city of Cairns reminded us of Hawaii, Puerto Vallarta, and/or Jamaica, depending on who you asked. Mom made us go to church, so we tried to stay awake through the boring sermon. Mom wants me to write that we “started off the day right” by going to church and thanking God for the wonderful blessings we had been given. Of course, she was the one we had to keep poking to stay awake.

We took the bus from Cairns (pronounced “cans”) to where we were staying in Trinity Beach, which is North of the city and much prettier. As we walked along the ocean, we saw a HUGE carpet python on the sand. This was our frightening welcome to Queensland, where you can be killed in several ways if you’re not careful. We passed the Trinity Beach swimming area, which was a small netted area to keep out the stingers (killer jellyfish) and crocodiles.

Home sweet home for a few days.

Then we headed to our rental home, hereafter referred to as “the mansion.” With three floors and four bedrooms, each with their own bathroom and ocean-view balcony, along with marble floors, we were living in luxury. We spent the afternoon lounging in our private pool (which also had an ocean view), taking naps in the sea breeze and living the good life. We just tried to stay away from the various little lizards, large beetles, and giant grasshoppers that tried to invade our space when we opened up the oceanfront wall of patio doors. We went to bed early, lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves, knowing that we had to be up bright and early again the next morning for our sailing adventure.

-Aubree (and Mom)