The train to Kuranda is a trip in itself | The Honolulu Advertiser

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The train to Kuranda is a trip in itself | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Sunday, November 4, 2007

The train to Kuranda is a trip in itself

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The rail trip from Cairns probably qualifies as one of the world's most picturesque train rides ... and maybe among the scariest, if you sit on the right side and are afraid of heights.

Australian Tourist Commission

WHERE: Kuranda, Australia. Kuranda Village, high in the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland, Australia, is an unusual place to visit, but its the journey there and back that grabs your attention.

GETTING THERE: From Cairns, take the Kuranda Scenic Railway. Built in 1891, the railway was built to link the Tablelands' tin mines with the Queensland coast. Considered an epic engineering feat, the narrow wooden railway track ascends the yawning Barron River Gorge in a series of switchbacks, tunnels and bridges. Looking out from the tiny wooden rail cars, the gorge walls on the left are vertical, jungle-clad cliffs close enough in places to touch, but on the right is a sheer 600-foot drop to nowhere. In the cars, a warning not to sit on the right side of the train for those scared of heights makes perfect sense. The 20-mile journey takes almost two hours, ending at Kuranda, a small forest community famous for its odd characters, markets and artsy atmosphere.

THREE TO SEE:

Take a short walk into Barron Gorge National Park, leading from the village center. You'll spot rare orchids, beautiful ferns and brilliant tropical butterflies.

Get close to wildlife with a 30-minute tour of the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, the largest butterfly enclosure in Australia, where an all-weather flight aviary shelters 2,000 tropical butterflies. www.australian butterflies.com. Cuddle a koala at Kuranda Koala Gardens, where there are plenty of bears but also large freshwater crocodiles, reptiles, great wombats and lizards — these definitely not for cuddling.

Listen to a didgeridoo — the eery wind instrument sometimes called a "wooden trumpet," native to Australia — being played on the sidewalk while you shop for Aboriginal art, handmade leather goods, lovely native wood items and opal jewelry.

GETTING BACK: Skyrail Rainforest Cableway offers a stunning 5-mile gondola ride high above the rainforest canopy back to Cairns. A roundtrip to Kuranda going by Scenic Railway and returning via Skyrail costs $72.50. www.kuranda.org.

Reach Chris Oliver at coliver@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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