Cairns (pronounced Cans) is located in the state of Queensland on the northeastern coast of Australia, inside the Great Barrier Reef. When the English first began settling Australia, a penal colony was established in the south of the state. From there, graziers, miners and small farmers pushed farther west and north into what is now the state of Queensland. Mining that continues today includes coal, copper, zinc and lead. Farming includes meat, wheat, and sugar. Cairns was originally established as a port town to export goods produced in the general region, being ideally situated where the mouth of a river meets the bay, with a wide channel through the reef out to the ocean. Products could be sent to Cairns via rail or boat, and then loaded onto cargo ships for export. Today, Cairns has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Australia. Queensland has a population of approximately 3.86 million people. The city of Cairns only accounts for about 100,000 of those people.

Customs and quarantine were at the boat within a few minutes of our arrival to clear us in. All of them were very nice, offering all kinds of helpful information. All were professional and proficient at their jobs. The quarantine officer asked to see the food stores, then began systematically going through all the food. We had been clever and cooked up everything that we knew would get confiscated. We found out it gets confiscated whether cooked or raw, whether packaged or not, unless it is packaged food from Australia. All of the cooked eggs, all of the beautiful meat dishes that we had cooked up and frozen in individual serving sizes for future passages, frozen quiches and meat pies, the microwave popcorn, all the trail mix, nuts, lunch meats, milk and powdered milk are just a few of the things seized and thrown out. By a miracle of God, Christi convinced her that the yogurt was made solely with Australian milk (there was an open container in the fridge) and from an Australian yogurt culture (the people who gave it to us were Australian, isn’t that close enough?), so our beloved yogurt culture was not confiscated. She scraped the soles of all our shoes so they were clear of any soil. She inspected all wood and shell items for signs of infestation. She then went through every cabinet and dock box on board to make sure there was no more food, shoes or any other banned items aboard.

While she was working on the food, the dog team arrived. They brought in a dog that sniffed through the whole inside and outside. A few minutes later they were back with a second dog who also made the rounds. They wouldn’t tell us what the dogs were looking for until after the dog were already on board. Turns out one is drugs and one is guns. As they were taking one of the dogs off the boat, she sniffed the garbage bag filled with all of our delectable meat dishes and stuck her nose in the bag. They had a hard time dragging the poor girl away from the bag. She really wanted some of that meat. We could sympathize, since we did, too!

We were checked into the country by 11:00. We checked in at the marina office, then, of course, we went out to lunch at a small café on the boardwalk near to the marina to celebrate. Eric got an Aussie breaky (breakfast), which consisted of two eggs sunny side up, toast, a cooked tomato, a piece of squash, a couple cooked mushrooms, and an enormous pile of ham, bacon and sausage, which he could not finish.

After lunch, Jaime went to explore the town while Christi and Eric went to a boatyard just outside of town. We needed an electrician to wire up an Aussie plug for our for electrical cable and we needed to make arrangements to get the bottom paint done. Australia requires it, which was fine with us because the paint is not as effective as it used to be. Fortunately, the electrician could come right away, and they could fit us in for bottom paint at the yard next Monday, a week from today. We went back to the boat to wait for the electrician. He was out within a couple of hours and the installation only took a few minutes.

For dinner we went to another of the many restaurants on the boardwalk. We had crocodile meat spring rolls, salad topped with kangaroo carpaccio, and barramundi fish. The food was really good. The carpaccio was more like a beef jerky, but it was tasty. The spring rolls were good, but didn’t seem to be much different from chicken spring rolls. Barramundi is a white fish with a light but firm texture with a good taste. We like it a lot. It is a popular dish in Aus, but Australia does not export barramundi, so it is hard to find anywhere else.