Skyrail and the 'Works'

Monday we went adventuring up to Kuranda on the Skyrail Gondola, Met at the top for a picnic lunch by Mikaela, John and John. Awesome trip, as the pictures paint, Abbey was her usual mischievous and delightful self, which i managed to get some great photos of. The Skyrail itself is a bit over 7.5km of gondola over the beautiful rainforest. Really worth the $32 it cost us to go up. Didn't quite have the excitement of the deadly critters the day earlier, though for people two gondola's ahead of us it did - some mechanical belt snapped and they went shooting out of the carousel with the gondola itself nearly coming off the cable which could have made for a really nasty accident. It left the little gondola swinging around madly 30 or 40 feet in the air, which was more than enough excitement for me, and i wasn't even in it. Mez reckoned she had heart palpitations. Certainly freaked the hell out of us as we were about to get into our little green caboose. But we're still here!
The next couple of shots are just of the views from the Gondola. Very cool eh? The Gondola has four ten minute (ish) trips with two stops in the middle, one where you can do a guided rainforest walk, and the other where you can go for a walk to the Barron Falls. The third scenery shot looks out over the Barron Gorge with the gorge running parallel to the Gondola. The Nearest hill is the one we were obviously on, the one in the distance is the one that the Scenic railway goes up and down. Abbey really enjoys all the sightseeing, she has started getting to about 9 or 10 in the morning and then saying 'car, car' as if to say - "where are we going today Dad?" Delightful again, but she's a tired wee girl today after two days without midday rests so she's getting some good sleep as I type! I think the thumbs up are a bit of a fluke - she was trying to click her fingers back at me (cos I was clicking to get her attention). As an aside, Abbey does quite a funny thing when she's trying to click her fingers - she makes the clicking sound with her mouth! Very cute! At three weeks, Lucy became the youngest adventurer the staff had seen go up the Gondola, though she slept through most of it! Unfortunately despite not actually being out in the sun, she managed to get one side of her face a bit sunburned which left us feeling like bad parents. Gotta be careful in the tropics eh?! So now we have views of the Barron Falls, which despite a few days of rain, remain pretty unimpressive. This may have something to do with the fact that about 1 swimming pool per second disappears underground just above the falls to run the hydroelectric station. Certainly you can see from the rocky chasm that it has the potential to be wonderously thunderous, but to date we've not seen it. Will have to go back once this wet season finally kicks into gear... Nice to be able to see the falls from that side of them though. They look like they would be great to climb! (minus perhaps the loose rock!) Managed to get this beautiful shot of Angie at the falls - and this great one of the sisters (NB note 2 sisters, 2 denim skirts, 2 singlets, 2 pairs dark sunglasses, 2 pairs of jandals) I wonder if there is a genetic component to dressing yourself! Note also who the leader of the pack is... Abbey! Lucy was looking stunning in her cute little bright pink and yellow singlet. Last time she wore this it looked a bit funny thanks to her Jaundice, this time looks a bit funny thanks to sunburn... third time lucky perhaps?? This series of photos really shows Abbey's cheeky side... first sidles up to Mez and is awfully cute, then yanks on her earring and thinks herself very clever and funny. She's been doing a similar thing to me, except rather than yank on my ears she pinches my collar bone. Hilarious facials -I wish i could capture it on camera, but for the pain! That was just to give reference to the comment previous about how much water is disappearing before it gets to the falls, this is upstream of the falls, or should i say upriver. Clearly the vast majority disappears before it gets there... After a pleasant picnic in Kuranda we headed for the works in Mareeba, Coffee works that is. Once there we had a bit of a downpour which was totally deafening on the tin roof... Very cool place though, and other than producing their own coffee on site (the tree beside Angie is a coffee tree) they also do tasting of all the different coffees and tea blends that they produce (I was surprised to be able to tell the difference to be honest, not being a regular drinker of either beverage) As well as chocolate tasting (was disappointed that they had tasting of coffee flavoured chocolate but none of the chocolate covered coffee beans that I was hoping to OD on...) and Liquers to taste too.



There was lots of informative stuff about coffee trading, growing and farming... Of note was that for a farm to be commercially viable nowadays you need about 4o hectares of land, not to mention $1.2 million and five years to watch the trees grow before they even give you your first harvest. Coffee beans that we roast are actually seeds located inside cherries that grow on the coffee trees. There are two types of coffee tree - Arabica (which is good coffee) and Robusta (which is typically made into instant coffee, and according to coffee affectionados is classed as 'bad' coffee). The Arabica beans are the only ones grown in Australia. I think crap coffee production is for third world countries?!



The ideal harvest time is when they are red, rather than green (not ripe) or black (too ripe). There are two methods of harvest. By hand or by machine. In a day a single individual can harvest about half a 25kg bag of coffee beans worth of cherries. With a machine harvester the same individual can harvest 22 of those 25kg bags (i think that was the figure). Economies of scale eh? There are then two methods of processing: Dry processing and wet processing. Dry, or 'natural' processing is where the harvested cherries are laid out in fields or trays to be dried naturally and the 'beans' collected afterwards. This is evidently not the best way of doing things as it takes bloody ages and leads to a lot of wastage. Wet processing basically involves putting all the cherries into a big vat of water. The black ones float to the top and are skimmed off then, the cherries are subjected to a gush of water, this presses them against a grill. The 'beans' are forced through leaving the fruit behind. Also left behind are the green cherries which simply don't break down. This leaves the best coffee beans being extracted at the other end of the processing machine.



These are then roasted, and the amount of time depends on how strong the flavour you get in your cup. Less time means less dark beans and less intense flavours. Clearly all this interested me somewhat, because I can remember it all, despite it being a day later as I write all this. Blogging is clearly better than mega memory courses. Just try and recall what you learned yesterday... Equally as fascinating was all the displays in the museum of coffee stuff. Quite interesting really. Like a history lesson with reference to the movement of Coffee all over the world with various big name explorers, there was even stuff in there about Captain Smith and Pocahontas though i can't remember the link between them and Coffee. Maybe it was just an interesting story. Anyway I didn't take too many photos there and only really browsed the stories that grabbed my attention... i think the brain had had enough for one day! That and Abbey was running around like her usual manic self.I was formerly of the opinion that Billy T was purely a NZ phenomenon. Clearly not I discovered. Though ask a Kiwi about Billy T and they'll likely give you a different response to an Aussie... Other than that I was most interested in all the Tea posters and what they said... especially that "it maketh the body active and lusty." Maybe there was something in that group of friends back home who were all pregnant and all tea drinkers... Then of course there were other truth claims... Large in their aspersions and judgements of other races... you can see how the Brits made so many friends all over the world eh? There was the delightful parable that follows... And then finally the religious link. I guess there's probably plenty of people the world over that breathed a sigh of relief at what could have been there... Again, a great day was had by all!