After our day long catamaran and snorkeling tour, we decided to go back out and see what else Cairns had to offer. We took a quick stop at the Didge Cafe, to make sure that my favorite didgeridoo hadn’t been purchased. Then, we continued down the promenade, until we made it back down to the Esplanade Road. We started checking out different places that we might be able to eat, by looking at the menu and atmosphere, finally decided on the Cotton Club. While the Cotton Club in Harlem, was an icon jazz club and cocktail bar, the Cairns namesake was a bit scaled back.
The Cotton Club has two spaces, one indoor space with tables and a bar and another outdoor patio space that was on the other side of the sidewalk. It was already dark and the patio and interior were dimly lit, to provide a calm and intimate setting. Instead of a hopping night club or pub, the space was quiet and perfect for a date night. The menu provided a variety of options for meat eaters and vegetarians a like, but the tourist prices that were marked, felt a little steep for the fare. In addition to beer and wine, Elizabeth and I ordered a Margherita pizza, our standard go to. The wait staff was more than accommodating and we didn’t have to wait long for our food or drinks. The pie wasn’t prepared perfectly and really hit the spot after our long day of snorkeling and sailing.
The next spot that we decided to stop in was the Cairns Night Markets. It was a relatively large space for the area, which had a food court when you walked in, with counters serving ice cream, Asian fusion and others. Having just eaten, we continued to the back to the open air market style shops. The shops seemed to be fairly tourist centric with a lot of the shops selling small items that would make fun souvenirs and your run of the mill shirts with the name of the place that you visited. Always a sucker for the shirt with the name of the place on it, Elizabeth and I picked up a shirt for the boys that looked like an Australian National Soccer jersey. As well as a shirt that said Cairns, but inside the letters were photos of the Great Barrier Reef, waterfalls, and the Kuranda Railroad. The three main destinations of the area.
A handful of shops also had Aboriginal style art pieces, didgeridoos, or handmaid looking crafts. It only took us about 15 minutes to walk through the different aisles, before we stopped at the ice cream stand. We got a big ice cream cone that we shared as we walked down the Esplanade towards the Doongal Aboriginal Art & Artefacts gallery.
The gallery was a nice large space that felt like we might be walking into a small museum. The space was filled with a lot of large and small paintings with a similar feel even though there were probably over 100 Aboriginal artists works displayed. I had made a habit of walking into every place with my GoPro, but I was stopped as soon as I entered to make sure that my camera was off.
If I was trying to get a feel of all the different unique Aboriginal art styles, I was in the right place. Much of the work that I remember was paint on canvas using brush techniques or fingers to create colorful pieces. Some of the paintings looked as though they were telling a Dreamtime story, while others felt like abstract patterns or expressions.
Their large selection of didgeridoos were all works of art first and musical instruments second and had a price tag to prove it. All of them were painted and carved in beautifully unique ways and all of them told a story, which you could image might have represented a song.
As we walked back toward the hotel, we walked past a fig tree, which was common all around the area, but this one had bats flying around it and you could hear their pings and screeches. That was definitely something that we didn’t expect to see in a quiet, downtown, but sure enough, these nocturnal creatures, were indulging in some breakfast, high above our heads.
Before we arrive at our hotel, we made one last stop at the conveniently located Woolworth’s for a few snacks and drinks, to enjoy in our room that night. We walked in through the back door and exited the front door, leaving us right across the street from the Hides Hotel.