Stony Point to Kuranda Part 4: Brisbane to Cairns

Finally I got on to the train that would take me most of the way.  For anyone also planning a ride on the Spirit of Queensland train, I'll note that it departs from a non-standard platform at Brisbane Railway station and doesn't seem to appear on any of the overhead boards.  I know this as I was waiting around for it to appear and when I decided to go and look for it myself, I had already missed the time in which you can check in bags.

Anyway, the train is amazing. It travels 1681km in about 25 hours (and therefore only averaging about 70km/hr).  The train has a dining car, carriages with normal seats and carriages in which the seats turn into beds. It was very comfortable.

 I admit that I spent a lot of the way wondering why the Queensland trains don't travel South to Sydney. They're much more comfortable than the New South Wales trains.  The answer, at least according to Wikipedia, is that Queensland mostly uses a narrow gauge track, whereas New South Wales uses the "standard gauge", so standard gauge track does go as far as Brisbane, but the nice Queensland trains all run on narrow gauge.  Queensland also has a 4000km Sugarcane tramways network that keeps crossing the main track.   Sugarcane was everywhere in North Queensland.  

The scenery definitely became more and more tropical as we went North.  There were plenty of Cranes, magpie geese, wallabies, Jabiru storks, ibis, pelicans, kangaroos, buffalos, eagles and hawks along with banana plantations, mango trees everywhere and lots of termite mounds in the fields.  Definitely a very relaxing and enjoyable journey.