Cairns and the Reef

My family is in town this week because of Chinese New Year so it was heeps of good food. My cousins, my brother and I went to Hurricanes Grill and Bar Steakhouse at Bondi and the portions were massive. This is a plate of pork and lamb ribs with a baked potato for $32.
After which, my family went up to Cairns for the weekend. We visited the Outer Barrier Reef and went on a cruise. The winds were quite strong so I didn't do much snorkelling but because of the facilities on the tour, we still saw some of the reef and fishes!
What do you do when your city doesn't have access to a beach?? well.. you can build one! Cairns have a man-made lagoon, with a little sandy beach on the other side of this pool.

Seafood was superb in Cairns, so we went to this restaurant Splash and the food was fantastic. This was their chilled seafood platter with oysters, scallops and gulf prawns and bugs. We also had Reef fish with noodles and green curry and also Mahi Mahi with lychee risotto.

For Sunday we went on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, travelled up via the train to the rainforest and down via the cablecar. We went past the Barron Falls.

and then we checked out Birdworld at Kuranda. The birds are free to fly around and they perched onto my brother and dad's shoulder. This is my favorite bird of all, a little night owl.