July 20, 2007

Today was somewhat of a “take care of things” day, where I spent some time on the internet this morning, Rob spent some time working on a fire department policy, and we both did laundry this afternoon. That meant it was a low-key day, which was sort of nice. (Also, we found out that the night before is waaay too late to book a trip to the Great Barrier Reef – so we’ll do that on Sunday.) We decided first that we’d get some breakfast and try to see a few museums. Unfortunately, we found out that today is a public holiday (fair day) for the Cairns Fair, which means that all the museums and a number of shops were closed! It also meant that there was a 15% surcharge at all restaurants (to make sure employees come to work, I guess). So we wandered around this morning and did some window shopping and booked a trip for the afternoon.
At about 1:00 we got on a medium sized motor boat and headed into the mangrove estuary for a look around. The guided tour was very informative of the history of the marina (from shipping to ship-building) as well as of the ecology of the mangroves. Apparently Australia discovered that their previous policy of destroying mangroves for “land” underneath it and to get rid of mosquitos and crocodiles was a bad plan. Now the mangroves are protected for their role in preventing farm run-off, protecting the Great Barrier Reef, providing nurseries to the fish and other sealife, and for their role as a safe-haven for boats during cyclones (which is a hurricane that spins in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere). Good for them! The cruise up the rivers through the mangroves was very peaceful. Sadly, we did not get to see any of the 30ish crocs that are still wild in this area. The crocs are left alone as long as they leave people alone. If one of them attacks or “makes a nuisance of itself” it is caught and sent to the crocodile farm – our next stop. Here, there were a number of enclosures where the breeding crocodiles lived. The small van that we were in took us around to a few spots where we could see the crocs very up-close, and the guide told us a bit about them. These crocs lay eggs, which are then collected and incubated to make mostly males (because they grow bigger faster) and then grown to an appropriate size to be used in the fashion industry. A nice thing to know is that every part of the croc except the eyes are used when they are killed for their skin: much of the meat is eaten here, and lots of the organs and other odd bits are used in Asian cuisine. Also, they are only killed to order, so there are a few pens full of crocs that became too old to be used a few years ago when there was a decline in people’s interest in travel and in exotic hand-bags thanks to the SARS epidemic. Weird. In Australia, it is illegal to sell or own any item made of crocodile skin that does not have a governmental ID stating that it is from farm-raised crocs, not caught in the wild.
For the rest of the day we did laundry and read and lounged, then got dinner on the Esplanade. On our way to dinner we saw a large group of people doing fire-juggling on the small piece of beach. They were quite good, and did some fire-juggling that I hadn’t seen before – like a hula hoop and a jump-rope that were on fire.