Kuranda

Today I visited the Wet Tropic World Heritage Area of Kuranda. I experienced it in a special way. First I took a cableway or Skyrail from sea level to the top of the rainforest canopy. My Grandpa and Grandma and I had a gondola all to ourselves, so we could stand up and take pictures and move around to see everything in the canopy tour. Half way up there is an interpretive center with videos and things to touch and look at, so we got off the gondola there. I learned that this tropical rainforest has over 2,300 types of plants, 650 of them are found nowhere else in the world. A closed canopy means that the leaves of the tallest trees join together high above the forest floor to filter out up to 99% of the sunlight. The Kauri Pine tree has “self-cleaning bark”, which sheds all the time to keep vines from attaching to the trunk. We got back on a gondola and continued up until we finally arrived at the top. There is a village and a zoo, tropical fruit ice creams and sorbet stands, cafes and shops. We spent time in Birdworld and the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, but my favorite part was the Koala Garden.

At Birdworld a big blue Macaw decided he liked my shoe and sat on my foot for a long time picking at the shoelaces. A red beaked Alexandrine Parrot sat on Grandpa’s straw hat and wouldn’t get off. He pecked a hole in it, but he was so pretty Papa didn’t care. Grandma sat and “talked” to the Cassowary for a long time. There are 80 beautiful Australian birds in a huge free flight aviary that you can sit in and walk through.

The butterfly sanctuary is the largest in Australia. It looks like a tropical rain forest inside the aviary. There were 1500 beautiful tropical butterflies. My favorites were the bright blue Ulysses and the beautiful green and yellow Cairns Birdwing butterflies.

Cuddling the Koalas was my very favorite thing to do at Kuranda! They are incredibly soft and very heavy for their size. I hope I can hold Koalas again when I go to Brisbane later this month. It is hard to explain how much fun it is to hold a Koala. They are sooooooo cute! I enjoyed my visit to Kuranda very much.