Tips and Advice for living at Cairns

I came to Cairns from Japan four months ago. Although my life here hasn’t been so long, I will share some tips or advice to live here.

If you walk around a city, you will find some rubbish bins along side walk ways (Figure 1). There are two colour lids. One of them is yellow-coloured and the other is green-coloured. These are for the different usages. The yellow-coloured lid bin is for recycling rubbish, such as empty plastic bottles for milk or juice, tin cans and glass bottles and so on. The green-coloured lid bin is just for other rubbish. When you throw away your rubbish, don’t forget this rule.

I’ll share a traffic rule next. When you drive a car on the high ways, especially at cross sections in Australia, you will find an odd traffic sign which is shown in fig 2. That is called a roundabout. There are many roundabouts at cross sections on the highway instead of traffic signals. When you approach this roundabout, you must be careful because you have to give way to the cars on your right. If a car is coming from the right in the roundabout, you must stop at the roundabout. The right-hand car has higher priority. If no car is coming from your right-hand, you can enter into the roundabout without stopping. Don’t forget this rule. If you make a mistake, you will have a traffic accident.

You know Cairns is in the tropical zone. So you can swim in the sea through all seasons. There are several beautiful beaches near Cairns. But you must be careful when you swim at some beach. You can find a warning sign at the beach (Figure 3). That sign shows there might be a crocodile and jelly fish in the sea. Many jelly fish are in the sea in November through May. If you want to swim in these months, you must swim inside of the designated sea-zone where it is fenced by nets.

There is more other advice. I’ll tell you them next time If I have a chance. Enjoy your life in Cairns!

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.