Today was our day to explore tropical North Queensland on a day trip to Kuranda from Cairns. A shuttle picked us up at the hotel at 8:20 and after a few more pickups, we arrived at the Freshwater Station to board our ride to Karanda. At 9:50 am we left the station on the vintage and historic Kuranda Scenic Railway train. It’s a tourist railway service that operates along the Cairns-to-Kuranda railway line. Constructed in 1891, the line runs from Cairns, Queensland, over the Great Dividing Range to the town of Kuranda. The railway line is 37 km (23 mi) in length. It is still used for some freight services and other passenger services.

      
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Once we were underway in our handcrafted Victorian inspired carriage with club lounge style seating, our Attendant presented us with a menu of locally produced food, and our choice of beverages. The personal onboard service was exceptional.

  
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Along the way we passed through the Macalister Range which looks out over the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The train also stopped at a lookout, which gave us a spectacular view of Barron Falls. The trip took just under two hours.

      
      
      
  
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Originally gold, coffee and timber attracted people to Kuranda. Since the early 1900s however, the town has been a tourist destination, with its wildlife attractions, markets, arts and crafts, cafes and restaurants. But as tempting as it was to explore Kuranda, we decided to forego it and immediately walked over to the Skyrail Terminal to catch our ride back to Freshwater.

The Skyrail Rainforest Cableway is a 7.5-kilometre (4.7 mi) scenic cableway running above the Barron Gorge National Park and Wet Tropics Rainforest World Heritage Area in Australia. The Wet Tropics Rainforest is the the world's oldest tropical rainforest, older than the Amazon rainforest. The Skyrail was the longest gondola cableway in the world when it was completed in 1995.

We had reserved a Diamond View (glass floor) gondola for just the two of us and it was quite the 4 ½ mile ride.

      
      
      
      
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The shuttle was still a half hour away when we reached the bottom terminal so we again called Uber to get us to the airport for our 4:00 flight to Sydney. Detouring to our hotel to pick up our stored suitcases, the driver got us to Cairns Airport with plenty of time to spare.

We departed on time on Qantas QF927 anticipating an uneventful 3-hour flight. Wasn’t to be though. 100 miles short of our destination we were put into a hold pattern over Newcastle for 1 ½ hours. They wouldn’t let us land in Sydney due to zero visibility from wildfire smoke. However, it wasn’t too much of a hardship as Qantas opened up a complimentary bar to help us ride it out. Finally landing at 9:30, we got our luggage off the carousel and bee-lined it to the Luggage Storage Depot to pick up our over-sized suitcase we had left there when we first arrived in Sydney. We got there 5 minutes before it closed for the night.

Another quick call to Uber. We were picked up and quickly on our way to our hotel for the night, the Amora Hotel Jamison in downtown Sydney. We arrived in short order and checked in. It didn’t take long before it was lights out.