Cairns & North Queensland
Cairns was to visit Steve, our great friend with a problematic heart and who worked with me way back in Brisbane at Silks time as my number two. Silks was the largest restaurant in the Southern hemisphere at that time, as I was reminded by Steve, and with his great support, we ran that place very successfully back in 1985 or so, just before I started with Sheraton. With a 10-kilometre radius for my kitchens, having three other operations scattered across Brisbane, and a 850 buffet restaurant, banquets, fast food, grill restaurant and snack counters at Silks itself, which was a trotting race complex, it kept us busy indeed and I used to tear around these operations on my 500/4 Honda bike! No wonder I like the Thunderbird I drive here, and had as many close shaves on that machine as I have had here on this machine. All good fun and things do mend up slowly! Anyway, back to Cairns and Steve, where we spent a good few hours walking around, having a few beers and discussing the deteriorating aspect of cooking in the youth of Australia! Most of the young chefs these days are not really prepared to place in the work to get ahead in this field as required, but I suppose that cooking will still survive with eight hour days and five days a week! Cairns itself though, is the main city of the Far North and is regarded as Australia’s most livable regional city. With a huge array of tours available, it attracts thousands of visitors and the city really does gear itself up around them. The good side to this is that there are many restaurants and bars in the city and it is very relaxing having dinner and a cool drink or two at these ocean-side restaurants.
Cairns has grown noticeably and I am glad that Marg and I we saw it when we did, 20 years ago when we flew up and then hired a car to take two weeks to drive down the coast, stopping and visiting various islands on the Great Barrier reef, when and where we felt like it! We sailed on the Gretel 11 on that trip, another Americas Cup challenger, snorkeled on the reef, visited Hitchenbrook, Hayman, Daydream, Green, Fitzroy and other islands plus we went up to Port Douglas and into Daintree on the small steam train and looked around the rain forest. This trip though was to sit and catch up on the last 18 years with Steve, which is exactly what we did and it was great, but all too short of course!
This area is also known as Tropical North Queensland, a wild and mostly untouched paradise of dense rain forests, and marine wonderlands. The Daintree National Park is an ecological Petri dish of rare and unusual plant and animal life with rocky escarpments, parched salt plains and gorges contrasting amongst the untouched wilderness. You would think the lack of human visitors would ensure peace and quiet, but the birds, frogs and insects of the rain forest are a choir of voices quite remarkable to witness. Meanwhile, offshore the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef in all its underwater glory is a silent adventure land. Stingers, or small jellyfish are common this far north, but divers who are adequately protected are rewarded with colourful and exotic displays of marine life. You still need to watch out for the sharks though, and if they miss you, look out for the aggressive salt-water crocodiles. They have it all in the Far North!
