How appropriate that it should rain when I go to the rainforest - Karanda village

I woke up this morning feeling like my whole body just wanted to stay in bed.  I did have a late night to be fair up doing my washing until gone 2200. BOOM and there you have it that reason I was wondering about, as to why 35+ year olds can't hang out with youngsters!  But after however many days I don't care about that I am most excited about having a clean towel as it had reached the point of not being able to dry me due to its state of salty dampness and the collection of Suncream coffee and tea spilt upon it was definitely not helping either.
However it might not have been my late night, it might be the massage I had where I am sure the lady was trying to crush the life of of my lungs and push my calfs off my legs I am not sure where she wanted them to go but definitely not where they are and belong!
Anyway I got picked up this morning by the swankiest coach ever leather seats reclining and a fairly full coach,  those single seaters savagely protecting their spare seat with the bag that clearly requires a seatbelt.  A quick scan around the coach to check this is my tour,  check definitely no one under 35 or for that matter 65!
As we take a short tour out to where the skyrail sets off to Karanda as with all good coach driver guides there is a gentle dialogue of the surroundings,  where we are going and our itinerary.  This is the point I realise that my 1530 train back means I miss my transfer to the airport for my flight to Darwin........hmmmmmm. Not much I can do now!
The coach driver informs me a little more about Capt Cook, he didn't discover Australia as apparently some people think but he was the first person to successfully navigate the E coast of Australia,  many say armed with the Spanish and Dutch charts.  Another addition to the ever expanding Capt Cook history that I gradually hear.
Today I am heading into the rainforest and up to karunda village via the #skytrain which is a bubble lift that goes 7.5km, however not continuously there are two separate cable loops so I don't know if that's cheating, but it is second only to Japan in its length , it has 114 bubbles and they go every minute and if you pimp out and go diamond class you can have a glass bottomed one.

For the first part of my journey I travel with a German couple both with swanky lensed up cameras almost fighting with each other for the photo.  So I pull out my phone with its additional battery pack to join in the cumbersome photo taking through glass and rain!
My two favourite things from this rainforest that I learnt about
1. The candle vine,  so called because it's leaves are shaped like candles and this desperately grows up and around bigger trees to try and get to the top and get some sunlight.
2. Apparently in a lot of rainforests 99%of the sunlight is won by the canopy. So plants have to be clever.
Now if I was a plant in the rainforest I think I would fall into the hitching a ride category.  Where the plant grows in a tree and gets taken up to the top as the tree grows up, like having a permanent little friend. Pretty smart if you ask me.
It is amazing how big and varied the rainforest is as the soil and water content change but also that basically this city is pretty much in a rainforest.
Karunda started as a logging and mining village and in fact they had on display an early Firefox not quite like the one Dad built its in our back garden

A couple of stops off on the cable car as you go up allows you to wander fidget in the first and learn about the different plants of you linger on the back of a suitable tour group.
Once at Karunda you hop off and ate in a village that is about 1km by 1km and you are greeted by the Karunda hotel one of the tiny original buildings from the 1880s that reminds me being in Sri Lanka.
Not far past that you can see how tourism has taken over and it is basically crazy shops but you have to walk to the car end of town to find the original heritage markets and they are very hippy and you can imagine in the beginning far more in keeping with the area.
I head to the Koala 🐨 sanctuary where I get the obligatory photo with a Koala.  Very strange creatures they sleep for about 22 hours,  get hardly any energy from their food supply that is actually poisonous to their offspring that to begin with the babies eat the mums poop.
But

Apart from the one I held the rest are seemingly precariously balanced on trees fast asleep.
However, there are plenty kangaroo like creatures to see including the quoka,  wallaby.  The super cool flying squirrel that basically has wings between its leg and arms a bit like those crazy people that jump off cliffs. Wombats,  snakes which weren't in their tanks...... And creatures of the dark which was basically a dark room where you had to play spot the something/anything.
You can do a really nice scenic walk around the village through the forest and within it there are some local aboriginal people playing the didgeridoo .  Also you can get sucked into the shops and I may have fallen into that gap and added to my charm necklace and acquired a new childish watch with Mickey mouse helping me tell the time! I did need a watch.
The time slowly ticked by and I head back for my scenic train ride down.
The train winds its way down at times precariously balanced on the edge of the hill turning sharp corners that the wheels or whatever they are actually called have to slip.
It is a super cool old train that has a real sense of history about it and you can imagine the people in the years gone by getting on it.  The place is steeped in stories from the dinner that happened on one of the bridges but the sound of the water was so loud no speeches could be made.  The area where they deliberately infected volunteers with malaria in order to test the cure they believed they had found.

As my transfer departed my hostel I had a fantatstic view from my scenic train as it pottered back down to Cairns.  It took 19 years to complete this line and 2 companies went bust in the process and it feels like it might be trying to take that long to get me back,  as 1700 goes past it becomes more apparent as I look at mickey mouse busting a groove on my watch face and smiling away saying I am not sure what but something.......that I might miss my plane.

A fast stride and taxi and I am at the airport one hour before take off loads of time for domestic flight no stress at all.  As always the automatic check in machine doesn't work for me,  but it especially doesn't work when you are one hour and one month too early for the flight.