Cairns city council offer city wide free wifi. This is a bad thing: Nowhere else offers wifi because the city do, but the city offering sucks. As an example, this is the city’s own website: “The server at www.cairns.qld.gov.au is taking too long to respond.” I wouldn’t mind but every site has started doing that – no doubt due to a cruise ship full of bandwidth hungry passengers hitting the city. Hmm. The local gateway’s stopped responding to pings. We appear to have broken Cairns.

Cairns has made up for it though, by having bats in their central bus station. I didn’t count them but there are at least a few hundred. They’re rather noisy but very pretty and adorable. Sadly the bus I wanted is once an hour, and I’d just missed the previous one. That took an hour out of the time I could spend at the destination, and meant I’d have to plan to come back an hour earlier to be sure of not missing one that could get me back in time. I decided two hours was too much to lose from the potential visit, so didn’t make.

To reach Cairns I’d had to come ashore at Yorkey’s Knob by ship’s tender, the helmsman entirely confused about where he was meant to be going, the provided map difficult to translate to the view in front of the boat.

He did well though, several of the passengers thanking him as they disembarked. Normally I’m one of only 2-3 that do that.

Another 20 minutes on the bus through small town and semi-rural locations, being in Australia evidenced when we stop for traffic and the bird flying past the bus is a green budgerigar. The bus dropped us at the lagoon in Cairns. “Only swim in the lagoon, don’t swim anywhere else” but no explanation. Given it’s by the sea I’m guessing currents not crocodiles.

Sadly by the time we reached Cairns it was too late to get to the cable car, do the tree top ride and get back in time to return to the ship. That option wasn’t the one by bus, so I’d missed out on both possible activities for the day. Instead I ended up drinking expensive coffee in the town centre, the sort of place you want a town centre to look like. Cafes lining the streets, palm trees down the centre of the boulevard, hot beating sun just inches from where you’re sat enjoying the gentle breeze.

The girls at the adventure travel company had turned up for work wearing hotpants and skimpy tops. That matched their customers, and indeed the students from the city’s university that kept walking past. Sometimes even the male ones.

Finishing what was to be fair a nice coffee I braved the intense heat (37C forecast) and walked down to Cairns Museum.

It was basic. They charged $10 entry and didn’t give $10 of value.

The walk back to the bus took me past a taxi. I asked about getting to a different museum I was interested in but it would be $40. That’s too much when I’d have just a couple of hours there, so I got on the bus instead.

Back at Yorkey’s Knob there were no taxis available, no shops within 2km, nothing to do except go back to the ship. I went back to the ship, distinctly unhappy. Nearly 3 hours of travelling for a cup of coffee and a shit museum, when we should’ve been docked in Cairns itself not 2 miles off some shithole nearby.

It doesn’t help that Cairns is fantastic. If I come back to Australia I’ll make sure I have at least a week based in Cairns, because there’s a ton of things in the area that I want to see and do. I’ve had the chance to do none of them, and it’s seriously annoyed me. I’ve left very strong (but polite) feedback via the ship intranet so no doubt someone will be calling my room to express their sorrow and probably try to offer a way to make it up to me. Short of paying for a two week holiday in Cairns it seems unlikely they’ll succeed. I didn’t ask for anything, just told them they didn’t meet expectations.

I also highlighted that despite the itinerary change not being mentioned until we were already onboard, and a crew member telling me she hadn’t known until then either, a parking restrictions board at Yorkey’s Knob listing cruise ships visits in 2018 started with the Celebrity Whatever in January and finished with the Noordam on 17th December. Interesting that they apparently knew in 2017. It didn’t occur to me to grab a photograph for evidence.

Lunch helped calm me. Food is a reliable mood enhancer.

Taking my shoes off after almost 7km walked I have a bloodstain where the blister hasn’t healed. At least it doesn’t hurt, didn’t stop me walking. I’ll see whether there’s anything in Airlie Beach tomorrow worth the effort and if not my foot can have a couple of days to heal before we reach Brisbane.

Later I noticed that the cold I’d felt hints of a couple of days ago has finally arrived, so maybe illness and tiredness (another early start) are taking their toll on me. By then I’d stopped being angry, reverted back to merely being deeply disappointed.

After catching up on El Reg articles from September (I’d preloaded them in a browser back in November, ready for days like this) that in passing introduced me to the delightful term ‘rainbow haired pronoun crowd’ I headed to the dining room for dinner. I requested a table to myself, lacking the emotional energy required to be polite to random Americans, and enjoyed chicken and chorizo soup followed by a rather nice bit of beef.

I was in the dining room even to eat alone because they promised Yorkshire pudding. A bit more cardboard than crisp but it was indeed Yorkshire pudding. I surprised the waiter by leaving the dessert menu on the table and, well, leaving.

Accidentally taking the wrong route back I found the Faberge eggs had been replaced by expensive watches. The cheap discounted versions started at $500, worked through Swiss quartz brands and headed into serious territory, Raymond Weil tourbillons. On the way out I spotted some Citizen watches and found automatic watches with tourbillons under that brand too, which makes me greatly regret the lack of ‘net access. I didn’t know they even did automatic watches, let alone ones with that complication. I now need to investigate whether it’s an in-house movement, whether they do a solid titanium version and whether I can afford it if they do.

The other thing I saw walking back to my cabin was the sun low on the horizon. Up on the aft deck with my camera it was already halfway behind the mountains lining the coast, then spent another half an hour changing the colour of the skies above them. I has photographs.

I also have a stinking cold. Late start tomorrow, we don’t anchor until 9.30 so a chance to sleep in – even if I wake up at 5am again, I can at least pretend to sleep longer. 8km today with a blister and a severe cold, I may just sleep through.