Our First Few Days in Cairns: From Red Dirt to Rainforest

We’ve been in Cairns for a few days now, crashing at a mate’s place while we hunt for jobs. It’s an odd feeling, swapping life on the road for something that almost resembles normality.

The weather has been gloriously miserable. Rain drifts through the trees, the mornings disappear into mist, and everything is so green it looks as though someone has turned the saturation up too high. After years of living among red dirt, dry riverbeds and the occasional heroic shrub, it feels like we’ve accidentally driven into another country.

One unexpected perk of our temporary neighbourhood is that civilisation is only a five-minute walk away. In the interest of research, we’ve sampled all three local cafes, inspected the pub, paid a visit to the butcher and, because apparently we’re becoming those people, found the local gin distillery. It turns out that if everything you need is within walking distance, your world shrinks dramatically. The biggest decision of the day becomes whether you feel like coffee first or gin. There are certainly worse problems to have.

The plan from here is to work our way through winter, then reclaim summer for ourselves. With any luck, I’ll find a job that leaves weekends free. After spending so long measuring life in kilometres and fuel stops, it would be nice to spend Saturdays chasing waterfalls, wandering beaches and slowly working our way along the Queensland coast with nowhere in particular we have to be.