A glance at the environs as we pulled in to the Aquarius the previous afternoon had me pencilling in breakfast downstairs before the ten-thirty pickup, but that idea got shot down in flames when Madam announced there were a couple of decent bakeries in the not quite immediate vicinity and that was where we’d be heading in search of breakfast ingredients.
I’d been thinking more along the lines of Eggs Benedict or something, but there you go.
Or, rather, there you don’t.
Anyway, I reckoned I needed the exercise, so we hoofed it over to Grafton Street and picked up enough pastry to do us for (at least) the next two mornings. We called in to the supermarket on the way back to pick up some odds and ends and it was comfortably after nine when we settled down for breakfast.
I’d been up much earlier, noted that despite the quality of the accommodation the instant coffee was almost invariably the tasteless International Bloody Roast and had visions of picking up a small jar of something more interesting when we were at the supermarket. I’d been left to guard the bread stocks while Madam and The Sister did the shopping, and was informed, once they’d finished, that coffee was too expensive at around $9 for a small jar and we’d be wasting money if I bought some...
So I’d diverted to a coffee shop near the Aquarius and paid $5 for a takeaway...
But I digress. By the time breakfast had been demolished and showers et cetera taken it was almost bang on time to head down to the front of the premises for the ten-thirty pickup, which came in the form of the obligatory coaster bus, with an older bloke already on board along with the driver. That delivered us to the Daintree Air Services doorstep, over in the General Aviation section that runs along the Captain Cook Highway, where we found a Scot and his Asian lady friend waiting for the flight, and a German couple with a toddler looking to see if there was room for them on the nine-seater.
As it turned out, there was, though there was a bit of calculation of weights et cetera before they became definites. Once we’d made our way across the scales and figures had been tallied and totals totted, we had the on the ground equivalent of those in flight safety warnings you get on commercial airlines, delivered by the hospitality staff who are totally aware that the majority of the people they’re supposedly addressing have tuned out.
It’s a bit harder to tune out when you know you’re going up in a light plane, you’re standing rather than sitting, and the person delivering the briefing is able to establish eye contact.
With the preliminaries out of the way we were ushered through the security fence on to the tarmac, where the seating arrangements were allocated on the basis of weight distribution rather than personal preference.
On a minor note of slight discontent I noted we were boarding an aircraft with the wings attached to the bottom, rather than the upper section, of the fuselage, which you might expect to get in the way of the scenic sight-seeing. Once aboard we taxied out, shuffling our way into the schedule on the single runway operating in an airport that is, apparently, the seventh busiest in the country. No wonder we had to wait…
Predictably, given the southeasterlies that weren’t operating to their regular strength but were still noticeable, we took off to the south, looping over Trinity Inlet as we headed out to sea past Cape Grafton and the Aboriginal community at Yarrabah. It was a matter of minutes before we’d covered the twenty-seven kilometres from Cairns and were performing a figure of eight over the top of Green Island.