Australia Day 7: The day of rest

Today we have plans for a lazy Sunday. We enjoy sleeping in a little bit, and when my alarm goes off, no one seems interested in waking up. After hitting the snooze for about 30 minutes I decide we need to get up or we won’t have time to eat breakfast. After that we plan to go to a local church that we want to check out.

Nate notices that my phone clock is off by an hour to the clock in the hotel room, so I google the local time to figure out which clock is correct. It turns out that daylight savings has passed and they “fell back” overnight, which is something that won’t happen in the US for another month or so. However in Queensland, which is the state we were in, they don’t observe daylight savings, so we actually have an extra hour so we don’t have to rush after all. I also have to manually adjust the time on my phone to make sure it is correct.

On the short 15 minute walk to church I want to swing by a pharmacy, often called a chemist in Australia, to see about getting some band-aids and ointment for Kailey’s finger (the one bit by the bird). There is one along the way to the church about a block away so we stop there first. 

We are surprised that in the pharmacy we find fun socks that are actually cheaper than we had seen in the night market. Landon over the last year or so has developed a style of wearing fun socks. This started after Nate gave him some of his fun socks that were too small, then over the summer we had found a lot of fun socks at the dollar store (Eggo Waffles, Sour Patch Kids, Mt. Dew, etc.) These don’t cost $1.25 like the dollar store, but they are $12 AUD ($7.92) for a pair. He finds two pairs that he wants and we get those along with our bandaids and ointment.

Calvary Christian Church doesn’t look like anything special from the outside, it looks about the same as other shops along the way. After going in a lady who is a greeter shows us upstairs where we are able to get the kids signed into kids church. After dropping the kids off, Nate and I head into an auditorium.

This church is very similar to the one we attend in Arizona, but the pastor is in person instead of on a screen. We find it interesting that we can hear the Australian accent when they are talking, but when they start singing the worship music we don’t hear it at all. Maybe because they were songs by American artists.

The church has stadium style seating which is a little different, but everyone has a good view of the stage. We enjoy the message by pastor Cam Murison. We feel very welcomed by everyone and have conversations with several people. They are having a welcoming party after church for new people who have started attending in the past month. I ask the kids if they want to go, and after Kailey sees they have cupcakes she is all in! We visit with a couple different team members including pastor Cam.

After church we walk a short distance to the mall to go to the grocery store for food to bring along on our snorkel tour tomorrow. There will be food available, however it’s very spendy from what I read in my research, so we get snacks that we can eat when we get hungry. Luckily we usually eat such a large breakfast that we aren't hungry until closer to dinnertime anyway.

We bring the food back to our hotel room and put it in the fridge. Our room had not been cleaned yet, but about 5 minutes after returning we hear a knock on our door asking if we want our room cleaned. We have had some really tiny ants in our room and had asked at the front desk if they could do anything about it. They said they could when our room was cleaned so we didn’t want to skip it. So we head out to lunch so they can clean the room.

Nate took this picture just to text his family and ask "What does Australia use to strengthen their concrete....?" and the answer "Roo Bar"

The Cairns Masonic Temple, built in 1934-1935 is one of several old buildings on the historic register in Cairns

Nate is keeping track of all the "utes" that he sees in Australia. We only saw 2 in Brisbane, but this bright green one marks the 18th one we've seen of strictly a ute with a car front and pick-up back. These are pretty much only found in Australia and New Zealand.

We decide on a restaurant called Cock & Bull, mainly because they had a lunch option of kangaroo and crocodile. We aren't overly hungry, so we get one order of that and a kids meal of fish and chips. We have the kids try one bite each of the kangaroo and crocodile and try to guess which was which. Kailey and Landon actually like the crocodile which has a texture very similar to chicken. The kangaroo, which is more similar to deer, is good but really needs a sauce. We had gotten a pepper sauce, but the kids don’t want to try that and are happy to eat their fish sticks.

The crocodile is the breaded and fried piece on top, and the kangaroo looks like a steak

Once done we take an Uber down to the pier to check it out. It would have been a couple miles to walk there and I have a small blister developing on my pinky toe, so I don't want to walk all that way since we plan to walk back to the hotel after exploring the pier.

This tree is known as a Cannonball Tree, because of it's fruit that resembles a cannonball. The fruit has a hard outer shell with fine hairs on them that can irritate the skin and cause allergic reactions. the fruit can take anywhere from a year to 18 months to mature and can weigh around 2 lbs. The flowers have a sweet fruity scent that gets more intense at night. The fruit however in contrast has a rather unpleasant smell, so although it can be eaten, it's usually preferred by animals.

The flowers are typically found close to the trunk of the tree

Cannonball Tree fruit are the brown balls on the tree

The water in the bay is at or near low tide and a lot of mud is exposed. We sit and watch some pelicans out in the muddy area and see a few girls that had gone down to explore and roll in the mud…not sure what the point was as they are covered in mud. We watch them climb out and head down towards the lagoon, but probably and hopefully the showers.