Holiday Day Six- Cairns

After finally arriving in Cairns we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. The trip up wasn't bad by any means but four people in one van for five days became a little overwhelming at times. Thankfully we had booked into what has to be Australia's best caravan park and we quickly settled into a routine of resting, eating, enjoying the park and sleeping.

Because I had to work on days 7, 8 and 9 we tried to cram a lot into day 6. First we visited the local shopping centre where I destroyed the local women's wear section of Target. For some reason they were selling all their work-wear for bargain prices and who can resist a bargain right? (Julie, don't read that OK!)

Thankfully the big guy was at the centre and they 'allowed' us to take our own pictures after buying a picture from them. Our picture is better than the professional one but it didn't really matter because this little visit then provided me with weeks worth of threats reminders to the kids that they had better not fight, pick their noses, annoy me, run away etc etc because Santa would be watching them.

After visiting the shops we headed for the Cairns Esplanade and were greeted by extreme humidity and loads of sunshine. I hate the sun so I convinced Tiny Girl she did too and we enjoyed an ice-cream while the boys walked down the jetty.

We then walked back down the esplanade and Big Boy spotted a strange fish lurking in the water. It turned out to be a mudskipper which is a pretty interesting character- they are fish that can walk on land. Big Boy was chuffed he had 'found' it and we watched it for a while until we spotted a helicopter ready for take off.

Although the day was hot and humid it seemed to instantly cool down around 3pm. We enjoyed watching the helicopter pilot do his pre-flight checks and then take off into the air. The helicopter safety assistant gave us some advice on local beaches so we then headed off to see what we could find.

The Qld coast is such a wonderful place to visit, but it's also very dangerous and there are many things visitors have to be aware of. In the Cairns area there are two main dangers, crocodiles and Irukandji Jellyfish. Both are able to kill a person pretty quickly and thus, although the waters are beautiful, you can't swim in any of them unless you are in a patrolled area. So instead of dicing with crocodiles and jellyfish we elected to play in the park instead. Mark fished (unsuccessfully) for a while before we called it a day and headed back to the caravan park.

I can't say enough about the Coconut Caravan Park, it's awesome. The whole park is family friendly and the facilities made it really easy for all of us to enjoy it without anyone feeling like they had missed out. Our routine  each night involved visiting the large pool for a swim with the kids and it's something I've been missing since we arrived home to what must be South-East Qld's coldest Summer on record!

A pool, a kids area, a spa and a whale slide - the caravan park had it all in spades