Thought I'd start a thread to give visitors to the forum an idea of what different parts of the world are like, so I'll kick off with my hometown - Cairns.
Cairns is situated in Far North Queensland, around 1700km further North than Brisbane. It has a tropical climate with temperatures averaging around the 30 mark most of the year and high humidity.
Population is around 170,000 although, that can nearly double due to the high numbers of tourists that Cairns receives as a result of it's proximity to 2 of the world's greatest natural attractions: the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics Rainforest. Cairns region is the fourth-most popular destination for international tourists in Australia after Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world measuring 2011 km in length and 72 km across at its widest point making it the world's largest World Heritage Areas. The Reef became on of Australia's first World Heritage Areas. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in recognition of its outstanding natural universal values. There are an estimated 1,500 species of fish, over 300 species of hard, reef-building corals, more than 4,000 mollusc species and over 400 species of sponges have been identified.
Australia's Wet Tropics is a band of tropical rainforest and associated vegetation that runs up the north-east coast of Queensland from Townsville to Cooktown. The World Heritage property covers an area of approximately 894,000 hectares. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988 in recognition of its scenic beauty and biological important.
We moved to Cairns in November, as a direct result of spending time there on part of a road trip we did last July, when we drove from Darwin to Brisbane. We instantly knew we wanted to live here and put our house in Melbourne up for sale when we got back from vacation.
When we were deciding where to emigrate to in Australia, we'd initially chosen Melbourne as we'd thought it would be easier to settle there as the climate isn't as severe as some parts of Australia and it has distinct seasons, we also had some family there and in many ways, it feels quite like the UK. However, 6 years later, we were ready to experience something totally different.
For me, the Pro's would be:
Outstanding natural beauty
Year round climate
The feeling that you're out of the rat race.
Con's:
While I've never really been a big city person, I'll miss some of the facilities that a big city offers. No test match cricket at the MCG, Australian Open Tennis, numerous professional sports teams, IMAX cinema, big-name touring bands/artists and other things a big city offers - theatre, museums etc. At the end of the day though, I only occasionally partook in those pastimes, and the price of internal flights still makes some of those things feasible.
Climate - until we acclimatise more, the fuel bills are going to be a touch on the high side with the air-con running more that is ideal.
Career. Cairns is large town size rather than big city. If a wanted to return to my original occupation, there wouldn't be much demand for it in Cairns.
Google Earth view of Cairns
View from my house looking across to the rainforest
My house
My house
Wildlife
Being situated on the edge of rainforest, we get plenty of wildlife around us. Pictured below are Kookaburras on the lamppost (taken this morning), a Lace monitor lizard on the edge of our garden & a green tree frog by the side of the pool. We also get plenty of cockatoos around, we had a fully grown fruit bat in the garage a couple of nights ago and I swear I've seen a juvenile cassowary close to the house, but my other half refuses to believe me (you know how it is, failing eye-site now I've advancing in years). Of the more unsavoury characters, I was walking upstairs one night and there was a huntsmen & a scorpion on the same step! We've also had a huge Giant Orb spider in the back garden (who 'accidentally' got relocated with the help of the jet hose)![]()
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