Cairns Botanic Garden

Today we went to the botanic garden for a morning walk. This post will be an easy read as I will just upload some photos. The gardens were very beautiful and there's no admission fee. So let us begin the tour!

Let's explore!

Impressive sign isn't it? The garden itself is not too big but one day was not enough to cover the entire area. We'll need to stay in Cairns so we can go back some day to see the parts we hadn't the energy to see today. We got a bit tired after several hours of walking. :) They have some hiking tracks we'd like to try and I'd like to see aboriginal plant use garden as well.

A trip to Asia 

The first garden was dedicated to bamboo. Bamboo is one of my favorite plants because my decorative bamboo is the only plant I haven't managed to kill. These bamboos are a bit taller than mine, though.

Tropic

The picture above is like a real tropical forest in real countryside. It's hard to believe that the city center is only 4 kilometers away. PS. Be warned, crocodiles inhabit these waters, so don't go swimming there if you don't want to lose a leg.

Zhanjiang friendship garden 

After the bamboo forest we saw this lovely spot, the Zhanjiang friendship garden. I think this was probably the most beautiful place in the entire garden and so calm, too. Would be nice to go for a picnic there. I guess I must be Asian at heart as I always feel at home whenever I see places like this.

Does a rainforest look like this?

Hazarding a thousand mosquito bites we walked through this mini rainforest. Luckily they had made a wooden boardwalk through the area as the ground was very muddy.

Orchids

There was a glasshouse in the middle of the garden. They keep all the carnivorous plants locked up in there.. In addition there were pretty orchids and butterflies. Hopefully the butterflies don't get eaten by the carnivorous plants. Those plants are very clever you know. They grow in a soil that's typically poor in nutrients so they use insects as dietary supplement.

A butterfly's afternoon nap

Lastly we visited the Gondwanan Heritage garden where you can learn more about plant evolution and the development of Australian wet tropics fauna.

They have guided tours in the garden in the morning, maybe next week we will participate in a tour and learn more about the plants we saw.