Is Kuranda worth seeing?
 

Hello All,
We have 5 days in Cairns.

Is it worth a day to go to Kuranda by scenic rail and back by sky rail?

Already scheduled for a day on the reef.

KSC

Opinions about the trip to Kuranda seem to be mixed. I personally liked it.

The priorities in Far North Queensland, in my opinion, are the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest. If those have been taken care of, one can turn one's attention to other things.

Although we'd already been into the rainforest (between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation), we enjoyed looking down on thje rainforest from the Skyrail, which provided a different perspective. We also enjoyed going through the Rainforest Interpretive Centre and listening to the rangers' explanations at the two mid-stations where we stopped to switch gondola cars. We'd already received quite an extensive explanation of the rainforest ecosystem on our Daintree - Cape Trib day tour, but we couldn't hear enough about the rainforest. We found it fascinating.

Some people say Kuranda is a hokey little town, a tourist trap or whatever. I didn't find it to be so. I thought it was quite cute. Okay, so you could go in a horse drawn carriage ride if you wanted to, and some people seem to think that's corny. So what? We were just in Charleston, South Carolina in April 2004, and they had horse drawn carriage rides there too. I didn't hear anyone saying the horse drawn carriages in Charleston were hokey, so I don't know why the ones in Kuranda are hokey.

We didn't go on a horse drawn carriage ride in Charleston OR Kuranda. There's more to Kuranda than that. We found the curtain fig trees interesting, for example.

My regret is that we didn't go on an overnight excursion to the Undara Lava Tubes. Next time.

Its more the experience and the views of rainforest from Skyrail and train than Kuranda village itself,however some do like to shop at the markets. There's also a butterfly sanctuary (where you'll see Australia's largest butterfly, the Cairns Birdwing, and the nearly-as-large iridescent blue Ulysses), a couple of large walk-through native and exotic bird aviaries and a small koala park - one of the only two parks in the area where you can still actually cuddle a koala for a photo, if that's your thing. And just out of the village there's some good rainforest tracks - just ask at Kuranda Visitor Information for a map. It's also easy to combine the Kuranda train/Skyrail with multi-award winning Tjakupai Aboriginal Cultural Park which is next to the bottom Skyrail station.

Hyper-touristy, but a beautiful ride nonetheless. Lots of alternatives in North Qld, especially if you rent a car or 4WD and can get out on your own.

Kuranda, is tacky and over touristy but for a tourist it is unmissable.The Tjakupai dance is interesting and my son was invited to join them..lol But In my humble opinion if you are in the area you should visit. Whether to take the train /skyrail or vice versa or just one both ways really depends upon you. And the weather of course. If it is in the wet season the waterfalls etc are a great sight but in a dry spell there may not be as many beautiful water spectacles to enjoy.
Either way it is great but when we were there the train up was extremely busy and perhaps the other way round may have been better.
Enjoy

Muck