We left Sydney today to head to Northen Australia in an effort to beat some of the heat (and the stinger jellies) rolling in as summer starts in Australia.

We had a really good sleep at our hotel, the Intercontinental Sydney, with a nice bed, lots of pillows, and thick blackout curtains (that opened/closed automatically) that created a dark cocoon perfect for sleeping. After taking care of a few morning errands and a quick lunch in the office building food court next door (for my Atlanta work peeps, see The Hub), we headed to the Sydney airport.

Sydney is a large metropolitan center with a population of over 5.5 million people. Accordingly, the airport is large and easily accessible from downtown. Check in and security went smoothly, until I heard the screening agent tell Betsy to “please remove your top” – what!? Oh, she was talking about her sweater that was setting off the metal detector. After that interesting episode, the rest of our Sydney airport time was uneventful.

We flew Virgin Australia, one of the country’s budget carriers. Not a lot of extras (cost for a checked bag, no free snacks, etc) but there were two aspects that we really liked – one, they boarded the plane from both the front and back depending on your row; two, while they did not have seat video monitors they did offer free WiFi with a selection of movies/shows you could watch on your own device. Both nice touches.

We arrived in Cairns (BTW, it’s pronounced “Cans”), and we got our rental car. Yep, we braved driving on the opposite side of the road. Thankfully, we were given a tank of a car (a Toyota Kluger) to help us feel safer. We made the drive from the hotel to our VRBO with no issues (except that I kept turning on the windshield wipers instead of the directional signal), even though we had to navigate 5 different roundabouts from the left!

After checking in to our VRBO, we decided on a walk along the waterfront esplanade. Cairns has a wonderful walking area along the waterfront in a park setting (Peace Park). The sun was just setting and many people were enjoying an evening stroll.

Then, we saw some large, dark flying shapes – and realized they were flying foxes, the huge bats that live in Australia! We geeked out and started taking tons of photos and generally gawking while the locals just strolled on by. It was hard to get good photos because of their fast and erratic flights but we did manage a few. Oh, and we captured a nice sunset as well.

Sound up on the video if you want to hear how loud these bats and birds were!

We also saw two other interesting bird species – the Bush Thick-knee and the Rainbow Lorikeet.

We capped off the night with a nice dinner at a Balinese restaurant. Very good first impression of Cairns and we look forward to discovering more in the area over the next five days.

Thanks for adventuring with us!