We have arrived!

Finally we have arrived in Cairns. We were scheduled to leave Dallas at 10:00 pm Wednesday night, but the bus that was bringing the crew broke down and we left about 45 minutes late. It was well past our bedtime! The flight on Qantas was long but very nice. Even though it was almost a 16 hour flight it was dark outside the whole time. This is because we were flying away from the direction of the sunrise. It is nine hours earlier here than it is in Tulsa, but we arrived 2 days after we left. We left on the 8th of June and arrived on the 10th! How confusing is that?! It was about an 8,500 mile flight to Brisbane. When we arrived in Brisbane around 5:45 am we discovered we were unable to make our connection to Cairns, because of the earlier delay, and had to spend 6 hours sitting around the Brisbane airport. We investigated the possibility of exploring Brisbane, but we weren’t able to figure out any good options.You can see Mrs. Morris and Peter reading the Australian guidebook while we waited.

Finally we arrived in Cairns, around 4:30. Cairns is a tropical city, of about 80,000 people. It was founded in 1876 as a port for the inland gold fields, but today the main industry is tourism. It is a good starting place to visit both the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, which we plan to do. . But tomorrow we will head up to the Atherton Tablelands and spend a couple of days exploring the rainforest there. It is a little cooler and has more farms and people than the Daintree. This may be one of our best opportunities to see a platypus in the wild. Cheers!