North Queensland

Cairns is the kind of city that exists to get you somewhere more spectacular, and it does the job brilliantly. From the Esplanade lagoon at dawn to the floatplane departures for reef pontoons at first light, everything here is oriented outward — toward the reef, the rainforest, the tablelands and the long road north. It's one of the best adventure travel cities in Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef here is the largest coral reef ecosystem in the world — 2,300 kilometres long, visible from space, home to 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusc. But what it feels like in practice is hovering above coral heads in 10-metre visibility while a reef shark circles the bottom and a hawksbill turtle glides past overhead. Day trips are satisfying; overnight liveaboard dive trips are life-changing.

The Atherton Tablelands rise above the coast — a cooler, fertile plateau where waterfalls plunge from escarpment edges into the rainforest below and crater lakes provide surreal swimming. The Daintree is where the Wet Tropics meets the coast: a stretch of World Heritage rainforest descending directly to fringing reef, accessible by ferry across the Daintree River. North of the river there is one road, and it eventually runs out at Cape Tribulation, where the Australian wilderness begins in earnest.