We will be in Cairns on December 23, 24 & 25. We would like to find good restaurants that are not expensive. I would love to eat where the locals eat, rather than just the tourist places. Of course, we would love some good seafood.

Hi - see the post on Restaurants in Sydney and Cairns. Christmas Day is a bit tricky in Cairns, many are shut. Some of the larger hotels do traditional Christmas lunches - they're pricey as staff has to be paid about triple time for working on Christmas day. Most of the Asian restaurants in CBD are open on Christmas Day and many have seafood on their menus.

Here's some ideas for you

Cairns has dozens of tourist restaurants but most look terrible or very tourist oriented. We looked for places off the beaten path that did not have lots of teenage vacationers but had lots of locals. We had a great meal at Fetta on Abbott a few doors down from the Il Palazzo Hotel. Still further down on the same side of the street is Chapter One Caffe Cucina where the owner seems to know everyone but us. We had a couple of really great meals there including a grilled sea food platter that was perfect. We had a B+ meal at the Red Ochre Grill

Have fun.

KSC

I also had a great experience at Fetta, it was so good we went back the 2nd night!

The hummus and pita appetizer was very good and the lamb gyro was excellent!

I went to the Yacht club which was cheap and food was ok but you have to go and order food, they do not come to the table and it seemed like only locals were there. It is very typical how many Aussies eat out in Australia though.

Jane - do you mean the yacht club in Cairns CBD (which has just been demolished) or the one at Half Moon Bay at Yorkey's Knob where you can eat outside over the water and share your lunch with the fishes?

pat

Demolished?

I have tears in my eyes.

Anything Aussie left in Cairns now?

Pat

Was the one downtown. I did go by the Yorky's Knob club while I did a walk around but it looked too intimidating to go in. It seemed like a "real" club from the outside, you know a bit poshy. I liked the Cairns club and feel really sad that it is gone. If you take all those types of places away you take the soul of a town away. They may not be world class but they are first rate Aussie types of places.

Hope they didn't tear down paradise to put up a parking lot!

Hi Jane - although the locals tried hard to save the club, afraid the developers won again and its gone. I'm talking about the one just near Hilton hotel and opposite Casino which I think is the one you referred to.

For Heaven's sake, do not be intimidated by the one at Yorkeys - there are some zillionaire yachties who use the marina there as well as mooring for the more humble local craft, but the club itself is pure Oz. Inside its all bar, pokies and TV sportscasting, but there's a large open dining area outside over water with terrific coast and sea views. As with the other club you choose your meal at counter, then it's delivered to table. Food is varied, reasonably priced and plenty of it, so it attracts many locals. Visitors are welcome - you do need to sign in.

We had some of the best food of our 5 weeks in Australia at the Garden Room, in the north end of Cairns, convenient to Pat Woolford's wonderful Lilybank B&B.
We also had an incredible seafood feast at Red Ochre. Seafood feast for 2 at A$53, was really large enough for 4: crocodile, prawns, oysters, mussles, tuna, barramundi and bugs ( cross between crawfish and lobster?).
buon appetito

A/D

Andrew - thanks yet again, the bugs are actually also known as "shovel nose lobster" or Moreton Bay bugs in Qld and Balmain Bugs in Sydney. Either way, they're delicious.

Thanks Pat

I will try the yachties club at Yorkies next week and post a report.

Off tomorrow, two main objectives.

To travel Atherton Tableland and to buy a house.

Have stress levels way too high. Have looked at houses for one year now and the prices don't make sense to me. My husband wants to be lost in the hillside with rainforest and I want to live next door to Woollies.

So probability after all this planning is that we buy nothing.

Still hold out we can buy a place we both feel is our home for the rest of our lives, in 4 years anyway when we scale down to semi-retirement.

Wish I could win lotto so I could buy a precious plot purely to save it from over development though !!

ahh anything to stop Matson type cancers on Cairns

Hi Jane - good luck with your house-hunting. Afraid there's going to be many more "Matson cancers" appearing around the beaches - check out the new Sea Temples at Yorkeys and Palm Cove. These places building so close to the sea are just asking for trouble when the inevitable cyclone/tidal surge hits - everyone will be fleeing up the Kuranda road to join you in Atherton!

Pat
No luck to find a house. Apparently everyone is buying houses up there now so we have to wait until things settle down a bit.

I did a suburban tour of Cairns to check out the various places, Mission beach area and also tableland.

The area you have your B & B is probably one of the nicer areas of cairns along with area around the botanic gardens. I looked for your B & B but didn't see it so perhaps it is not on the road the bus travels.

I saw so many areas of Cairns that to be honest should be torn down but they seem to be tearing down perfectly good forest or perfectly good buildings instead.

I was quite sick when I saw the red blot on the landscape at Redlynch. there must of been some really nice trees that would have provided a great deal of shade for the new houses. Not only that but it would have the new estate blended into the bushland rather than stick out like an eyesore.

I loved Mission Beach area but didn't see too much of it. Reminded me of areas where I spent my summer holidays as a child. I really liked what I saw around that area but maybe it is next on developers target list.

I was sorry to see the new resort at Yorkeys claiming some nice treed area. Again I think it better to improve an area with such resorts, not ruin them. If they bought up existing houses that are a bit ordinary and replace with a nice building then I am not too against some development. But.......

For example I think the apartments on Spence street were very nice (mind you, don't know what was there before) but the new Clarendon has just gone too big by a bit.

Anyways I am a bit upset. Cairns council seems to have done some great things but perhaps they are losing sight a little or being bought out.

Still whenever anyone asks me what I love about Cairns I always say it is the people. As long as they never change it will be a great destination.

My apology to the thread author for going off on a tangent. !

Oh Jane, that's happening all over the place. There's a megaboom in property here everywhere. Mainly led by investors with megabucks and retiring babyboomers from the south with buckets of retirement money looking for their sea-change. Most of them have no idea of what they're getting into - they've never seen an even minor cyclone which we've been spared for the last few years - all you need is a category 3-4 which, if it hits in a strategic position could wipe Cairns and surrounding areas out. It's happened before and there's no reason to suppose it won't happen again. If I were you I'd bide my time,maybe rent for a while and give the market a chance to settle down a bit.