I think I landed on my feet in Cairns with regards to the accommodation. I am staying in a four room apartment. There is a pool and a lovely little garden. Currently there are three girls here too. A Japanese, a Chinese and a Korean. It sounds like the start of a bad joke I know. The guy who runs the house is Irish and definitely has a touch of the blarney about him.
The picture is of the street next to the council offices showing the amazing Arial roots of the fig trees.
So I’m in my last few days of my adventure. I am ready to come home now but there are some things still to see and maybe revisit. So I have visited the Cairns Art Gallery where a good deal of Aborigine art is displayed.
I feel dismayed for the Aboriginal people I have seen here. They are very much on the fringes of society and they are so down trodden that it is difficult for them to be proud of their heritage. The statistical information and the history of how they were treated by the European settlers makes grim reading. I wonder why this happend here when in New Zealand there seems to have been a smoother integration overall and a definite sense of pride in being Maori or even part Maori.
I’ve made an effort to buy some of the Aborigine produce and souvenirs when I can. I have also made an effort to say hello to any I pass too. The young are much more open to this and can be chatty in the same way as all other Australian’s seem to be, that makes me hopefull. In the gallery was a poster that invited people to “recognise and share the survival of the oldest culture in the world”. The Aborigine have a lot to be proud of, they lived for 50,000 years in pretty much perfect balance with thier environment. We could learn a lot from them I think.
Cairns is a small City and easy to walk around. I walked to the end of the Esplanade to where there is a mangrove swamp and then on to the botanic gardens which cover a large area. Here were the Tank Art exhibitions. The venue is a group of war time oil tanks that have been converted into circular rooms. There was an exhibition of photos entitled “Cops Day Off”. Showing the police are actually human beings! Who knew?
A great deal of the garden paths were closed but I enjoyed the shade and the bamboo gardens the most. I ambled back to my accomodation via a cemetery which was full of birds. Bee eaters and Ibis everywhere!
The Travelling Bee 