Tjapukai and the Best Gelato in the World (so far...)

Tjapukai is an experiential museum of the aborigine culture in this area.  The particular group of people, as we learned, had a huge territory that stretched from the reef to inland over the mountain range into the rainforest.  We heard and learned about the didgeridoo, an instrument that sort of sounds like a mouth harp, but is actually made from a very long, hollow piece of timber.  We heard a creation story in the native language that was translated to use through headsets--a pretty good idea.  We saw dancing, and fire being made from friction fire sticks.  And, all three boys tried spear throwing and boomerang throwing.  None were any good at the spears, but JR got the boomerang to come at least partway back to him.  We also got to hear about the uses of native plants.  We had a good time-- it seemed important to try to spend a little time getting to know more than just the Euro-Australian culture while we are here.

Some dance

Lighting a fire

Spear throwing with a tool something like the Native American adle-adle

We have had a very lazy afternoon. With all the other activities, we hadn't walked around Cairns very much.  The city has a man-made lagoon that sort of serves as a plaza and a beach.  Today, as it was Saturday, there were hoards of people lying in the sun and kids and adults dipping in the lagoon to cool off.  It sort of looked like a family friendly version of a college campus in the late spring.  The atmosphere is so relaxed and subdued.  I am sure there are wild parties somewhere, but it seemed very calm and rated G this afternoon.

We found the best gelato in the world.  We passed up a chance for New Zealand gelato, since Mark wanted to hold out for Australian.  I hope what we found was Australian. The stand was called Vanilla and all the flavors had a little extra kick that made them taste like the real fruit.  I had pink grapefruit and chocolate in my dish.

Our hotel is across from a fabulous children's park.  It had really active structures, some water play areas and a sandy beach like surface.  JR had been hankering to check out how the wheelchair accessible swing worked, so we strolled over.  Mark and I ended up leaving the boys there for another hour.  We thought our playground days were done, but no!  Once the little kids found that there were two teenagers who would play with them, they sort of developed a little playgroup. I liked the tiles that were made by children and think Genevieve's turtle was particularly nice.