After taking the bus back into town, Dean and I got back together with Nicole at one of the downtown grocery stores. The goal: to purchase rations for a picnic on The Esplanade. As part of its waterfront re-development effort several years ago, Cairns set up probably about a dozen city-operated, free-to-use barbecue stations all along The Esplanade and the adjoining boardwalk. On nice days, tourists and locals line up before the sunrise to get squatters’ rights on these cooking stations, as they are generally extremely well-cared for by the city and have fantastic adjoining picnic facilities. Grrreat place for a barbecue and / or picnic. Thankfully, after a week of wet weather, the clouds had just started to give way that afternoon and we were able to easily find a picnic table to set up a quick-and-easy barbecue by the ocean.
Note: you will notice all of the mud where a beach should be. At high tide, this is all covered with sea water (albeit a very shallow amount). At low tide, it's all mud flats. For this reason, Cairns is said not to have its own beach in-town (although there are several quite close-by both north and south of town).
Nicole and I had big plans for that night: Shannon Noll was in town giving his second concert of the week. (Insert here - laughter at the expense of Nicole and Kevin). I won’t journalize the entire concert – I’ll spare you the details. In short, however: small venue, standing room only, Kevin could see over top of all the 12-year old girls and their mothers, great sound system, I heard all the songs I wanted to hear, and my pictures turned out great. Done deal.
No real recipe to share here – everyone has their own take on the “perfect picnic”.
However - here's a great link from the Food Network on pinic packing tips:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/et_pa_picnic/article/0,,FOOD_9863_1746033,00.html
1 comment:
Looks nice! Awesome content. Good job guys.
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