Cairns is a modern city. We didn’t come here to tour old buildings or to view historic sites. But when we got away from the tourist madness at the harbor and the esplanade, we found a pleasant, almost ordinary community. Residents can find a few hours of diversion in places like Flecker Botanic Gardens.

The gardens were created in 1886. Plantings are mature. Narrow paths wind through clumps of exotic plants.

Some specimens are Australia natives. Other rare species were imported from tropics around the world. Many are in bloom.

Some shade-loving plants live in this building. I’m tickled by the term, fernery. Sounds very British.

The cylindrical roof consists of shade cloth encrusted with growing green gunk. Inside, it feels like being in deep jungle. Mozzies (mosquitoes) are thick here. Laura ran back to the car for repellant.

Orchids bloom inside the fernery.

Pitcher plants top the list of the unusual, at least to me. They’re an adaptation to infertile soils. For nutrients, they trap insects on the yummy but sticky underside of the lid, which then closes. Bugs ultimately drop down into a reservoir of digestive fluid.

Many gardeners keep up the gardens. I envy guys whose jobs consist of riding a mower.

In Australia you can get away with wearing a bush hat, even if you’re a gardener working in an urban park.

Australia is safety conscious, more so than most countries. For example, here we have a worker on a machine moving at maybe two miles per hour. For precautions, he’s wearing a reflective yellow vest and his mower sports a flashing amber lamp. To alert the clueless, no doubt.

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Adjacent to Flecker Botanic Gardens, tracks lead through some of the last remaining bush in Cairns, leading to Centenary Lakes. On the way, we passed through something I’ve never seen before: a municipal swamp.

Strange things grow in the swamp, like these grapefruit-sized fruit.

Water lilies offset mud and decay. Out of corruption, beauty.

Flecker Botanic Gardens is the most tropical garden I have ever seen. The specimens are unusual; many I’ve never seen before. They bloom year-round in vibrant colors. Their shapes are other-worldly.

When I lived near San Francisco I would visit the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, a large Victorian glass building that houses a couple thousand tropical plants. These plants are maintained with considerable effort: providing heat and humidity, suppressing greenhouse diseases, managing overcrowding in limited space. The effect is highly artificial.

In contrast, the Cairns gardens appear natural—plants thriving in their natural habitat.