We had to leave our Treehouse in the rainforest early on the 29th – we needed to return our car to Hertz in Cairns before 11am! No more car for us for now and time to plan the rest of our holiday.

Our dreams of flying to Urulu (aka Ayers Rock) will not happen due to the high cost of flights so we are focusing on the next phase – we will spend some more time in the Sydney area before we leave Australia from there.

We are in Cairns for few more days until we get the Sydney flight. Sometimes we are barely surviving the hot muggy weather but are relaxing, enjoying the food and waterfront and I’ve been swimming in their huge man-made lagoon every day.

Although today seemed especially hot and muggy it was our last day in Cairnes so wanted to see a few more sites – the Botanical Garden near the airport and then the Cairn Museum. With some advise we were able to use a local bus to get around.

The botanical garden covers a large area and has a number of beautiful and educational trails which enjoyed until we started to melt. A cafe with fans saved us! Funny that we got to see more rainforest just outside of town!

I continued on to the Cairn Museum and enjoyed reading about the areas history and seeing exhibits. I didn’t take many interesting photos but here are a few.

In the many days we’ve been in Cairns we’ve found a couple of favorite restaurants for dinner – one Vietnamese and the other Indonesian! After dinner we’d walk back along restaurant boardwalk area and enjoy a cool breeze off the ocean.

So goodbye to Cairns and the state of Queensland and heading back to Sydney in New South Wales tomorrow.