If you're only visiting Australia for a short holiday as opposed to a year of travel, you might want to consider Cairns as your destination. It's the tropical touristy small town of northern Queensland with more than enough day trip options to suit your timeframe. I've taken my trips to the waterfalls of the Atherton Tablelands, the Daintree rainforest, skydive on Mission Beach, and scuba on the Great Barrier Reef all from Cairns. Basically, a few of the coolest things to do in Oz. In the interest of keeping my blog entries focused and at a reasonable length (I seem to fail at that most of the time), for now I'm going to just concentrate on Cairns itself and a rundown of a few of its many hostels.
This is a great example of plans not going the way you had pictured them. I had no intentions of going to Cairns this early on in my trip. I did not have nearly enough money to do all of the things I wanted to do up there, besides the fact that I wanted to travel down the east coast afterwards. However, I needed to move on from Melbourne and look for work, flights to Cairns were the cheapest option at $89, and it just turned out to be a decision that made sense. It was the end of April, fruit picking season in Queensland, and the job situation seemed more promising than in other destinations. So I had to accept the fact that my ideal plans were all jumbled and I was going to have to just head up there.
Landing in Cairns was awesome. As much as I loved Melbourne and Tasmania, they weren't exactly sunny holiday destinations. Stepping off the plane in Cairns was stepping into immense heat and it really felt like I was on a vacation. In fact, it took a week or two before I got used to being out traveling again. I kept thinking I was heading back to Melbourne, and it was weird to remind myself that I didn't live there anymore.
Since I actually ended up being in Cairns three separate times, instead of doing this in any sort of chronological order, I'm just going to tell you a little about the town.
To start with, Cairns is small. There are no towering buildings or big attractions in Cairns itself. You can see the clear blue sky and the hills from anywhere in town. There are little information centers and places to book tours on every block, loads of hostels, bars, and souvenir shops.
The main area to hang out is the esplanade.
There's a huge expanse of mudflats reaching out all the way to the ocean.
As everyone knows, the Aussie wildlife is out to kill you. In the case of the sea specifically, we're talking jellyfish, crocodiles, sharks, stonefish, and more. It isn't safe to swim in the ocean in Cairns, so they've built a lagoon instead. It's always popular since it's always summertime.
There are also plenty of backpacker deals around. The Woolshed offers a free meal if you buy a drink, but expect substandard food and long lines. At some hostels you can get vouchers for $6.50 meals at PJ O'Brien's that also include a beer. And of course, if you stay at The Jack you can take advantage of their backpacker dinner, but I'll get into that in a bit.
I hope you weren't expecting more about the town sights, because that's basically Cairns covered, but don't think it means it isn't a great time.
Oh, and make sure to look up in the trees for the very cute bat population.
The Hostels
I have either stayed in or visited quite a few hostels on my various trips to Cairns, and I've got strong opinions on where to stay and where to definitely avoid.
Avoid: Koala Beach Resort
To be clear, I only booked a few nights at this hostel because when I did my sailing trip in the Whitsundays, I was given a free night voucher for Koala. Calling it a "beach resort" is very misleading. It is a hostel straight out of a slasher flick. The building is a few stories tall with motel style rooms and surrounds a courtyard that is mostly shielded from the road and almost always empty, so nobody wandering down the street would notice if you were in there, say, being butchered by an axe murderer.
The whole place feels abandoned and left for ruin. The couch and pool table outside are rarely used, the kitchen is dingy, cramped, and dimly lit, and at night the only lighting in the courtyard were these eerie blue overhead lights.
On the bright side, I had an entire six-bed dorm to myself and had my best sleep in forever there since it was so quiet.
Consider: Calypso
I didn't actually stay at Calypso, but I stayed at its sister hostel, NJoy, and they ran a free shuttle over there one night for Calypso's reptile show. It's a little out of the center of town, but everything is really so walkable and it's always warm outside (although it does get rainy). Calypso was such a cool little hostel. There's a bar outside (the Zanzibar), a pool, and lots of outdoor space in the courtyard. The rooms were basic and on the smaller side, but the common areas were great.
For the reptile show, they had brought a python and a few lizards, one of them blue-tongued.
I also returned to the hostel another night and ended up half-skinny dipping with some of the other girls from NJoy. Summer nights are nothing if you aren't naked in a public pool.
Stay: Gilligan's
By overwhelming consensus, Gilligan's is the place to be in Cairns. Not only is it a very nice hostel, but it has the biggest and most popular club in town.
There's something on literally every night there, from amateur pole dancing to gladiator wars to jello wrestling (although they had run out of jello at the one I watched and let the girls go at it in a tub of ice which somehow doesn't seem like the most logical substitution). The weekends have DJs and big crowds.
I really loved the rooms as well. It's air-conditioned, comfy beds, plenty of space with ensuite bathrooms, and big personal balconies for each dorm.
The kitchen and lounge areas on each floor are spacious as well. Oh, and there's a pool outside! It may be a little pricier than some of the other hostels, but there's a reason.
Avoid: Global on the Waterfront
There are two Global hostels in Cairns, and while I can't speak for the other one, I can tell you that you can do so much better than the Waterfront hostel. I did not stay there personally (the reviews online were terrible), but I attended a birthday party there with some of my friends in one of the dorms. The rooms were tiny and sweltering hot, there were no stairs, and maybe the only redeeming feature was a balcony, but that's not enough incentive to stay there with so many superior hostels in town.
Consider: NJoy
My first hostel in Cairns was this little one slightly off the map. It's only a short maybe 10 minute walk to town, and it's fairly nice. The rooms are extremely basic, but there's a little garden courtyard and a pool, and it's not so bad as a cheaper option.
Stay: The Jack
As much as I know that Gilligan's is a nicer hostel in general, part of me wants to convince you to stay at The Jack instead. In some ways, I even prefer it. There are two sections- the hostel building with dorm rooms and a separate motel-like building attached to reception with private rooms. The hostel has a bar downstairs, but unlike most hostels with bars, there are no restrictions to having your own alcohol in the rooms. Each room even has a fridge!
The rooms are decent enough, and the common area is a bit strange with linoleum floors, laundry lines hanging across the center, and the unisex bathrooms just out in the middle of that big open area. Then there's this awesome, massive wraparound wooden balcony circling two sides of the building with picnic tables where everyone hangs out to drink at night.
The selling point though has to be that they give you 200 megabytes of free wifi every day and offer a free meal down at the bar each night! No catch at all, you don't even have to buy a drink or anything. It's actually a substantial amount of good food (veggie option available), and you can upgrade it to a double serving for something like a few bucks. Such good value for a hostel.
Kuranda
Kuranda is a nearby rainforest village that you can catch a bus to from Cairns. I had an interview there one day for a waitress position, and I actually was offered a trial, but having factored in the low wages, cost of accommodation and food in the area, and likely taking trips back to Cairns all the time, it wasn't worth taking.
I did have some time to wander the town though, and it's small but cute. There are shops, a few really overpriced tourist attractions like koala photos (I was way too broke to consider anything like that at this point in time), and the old heritage markets which reminded me of Jamaica.
There's also Barron Falls which you can take a shuttle over to see.
Cairns is a great base for adventures and the place to either begin or end your east coast journey. More to come soon on all of the nearby day trips!