Sport and Recreation
Notable sporting grounds include Barlow Park, Parramatta Park, Cazaly's Stadium, the Cairns Convention Centre (basketball), and the Cairns Hockey Centre.
Cairns has a National Basketball League (NBL) team, the Cairns Taipans whose home court is the Convention Centre, known as The Snakepit during Taipans home games. The Skill360 Australia Northern Pride Queensland Cup rugby league team played their first season in 2008, and act as a feeder team to the North Queensland Cowboys who play in the National Rugby League. The Cairns region has a large association football (soccer) community with a local competition which spans from Port Douglas to Innisfail and west to Dimbulah. Notable association football (soccer) players from the region include Socceroos Frank Farina, Steve Corica, Shane Stefanutto and Michael Thwaite. Cairns also hosts growing bases for Rugby union, and a local league of Australian rules football.
Cairns is represented by Brothers Cairns, Cairns Kangaroos and Southern Suburbs in the Cairns District Rugby League. There is a baseball league at Trinity Beach. The Cairns Showground is used for sports as well, as the Cairns Show and funfairs.
Cairns is a major international destination for water sports and scuba diving due to its close proximity to the Great Barrier Reef. Other recreational activities popular with tourists include whitewater rafting, skydiving, kitesurfing and snorkelling.
Read more about this topic: Cairns
Famous quotes containing the words sport and/or recreation:
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor—because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.”
—Angela Davis (b. 1944)