Travelling to Cairns, Australia in our 60s♪
In our previous article,we shared the things we were glad to bring with us.
What to Pack for Cairns: What We Were Glad to Bring in Our 60s
This time,I’m sharing the things we
brought to Cairns but did not really need.
I hope this helps you pack a little lighter☆
Cash (Australian Dollars)
A few days before leaving Japan,
I exchanged just
¥5,000 worth of Japanese yen into Australian dollars.
Since credit cards are accepted in many places,
I thought ¥5,000 would be enough to start with,
and if we needed more cash,
we could exchange more in Cairns.
But during our trip,
we never actually had a situation where we needed to use cash.
In the end,
we spent the remaining Australian dollars
at the duty-free shop at Cairns International Airport.
Depending on the transport you use
or the shops you visit,
cash may still be useful,
but on our trip,
we barely needed it.
I exchanged my money at
C-Market at Ikebukuro Tobu Hope Centerin Tokyo.
There were several currency exchange options in Ikebukuro,
but at the time,this shop offered a better ratethan the other places I checked.
These areAustralian dollar banknotes.
They are made from polymer,
so they can handle getting wet much better than ordinary paper notes.
They are colourful, and some even have birds on them — very cute!
You could even keep one as a souvenir.
But if we're talking purely about what we actually needed for the trip,
we did not use much cash at all.
If you still want to carry some,
I recommend keeping the notes in a long wallet or a bi-fold wallet.
Trying to fold them into quarters to squeeze them into a tiny coin purse
was not very convenient.
They are harder to fold than Japanese banknotes.
Polymer notes do not cooperate quite as nicely.
Insect Repellent
Green Island has lots of trees and I expected it to be humid,
so I packed insect repellent.
I brought an insect repellent from the Australian brand Perfect Potion♪
But...
we did not get bitten by mosquitoes at all!!
We barely noticed insects either.
That may have been because we visited in late May,
the temperature was not especially hot.
So,
during our particular trip, we never really needed the insect repellent.
Of course,the number of insects can vary
depending on the season and location,
so if you are travelling in a hotter period,
you may still want to bring some.
An English Phrasebook
I bought an English phrasebook,
studied it before the trip, and even packed it in my luggage.
And then...
I never used it.
If you want to study before travelling,
a phrasebook can still be useful.
But if you do not think you will actually open it during the trip,
I would leave it at home.
For communication while travelling,
Google Translate and the ChatGPT app can also be very useful.
For us,
the English sentences we created with ChatGPT often felt more natural and easier to use.
So yes, I bought a whole book,
studied it, carried it all the way to Australia...
and barely opened it.
Sheet Masks
I usually bring sheet masks when I travel, so I packed some for Cairns too.
But when we visited in late May,
the weather was relatively comfortable,
and we were not sweating heavily.
The weather also changed often,
with cloudy and rainy periods,
so during this particular trip,
I did not feel that my skin needed the extra care I had expected.
As a result, I never used the sheet masks.
If you are visiting during a hotter period,
or planning to spend long hours in strong sun,
you may still want to bring some.
What We Could Have Left at Home
Those were the things we packed for Cairns
but barely used.
Cash, insect repellent, an English phrasebook and sheet masks.
None of them were bad things to pack,
but for our late-May trip,
they simply were not very necessary.
And the phrasebook probably had the toughest trip of all:
Japan to Australia and back again, without being opened.
