Far North Queensland

Nowhere else on earth do two UNESCO World Heritage landscapes exist side by side. Cairns is the gateway to a place where the oldest rainforest on earth — 130 million years of continuous growth — descends to fringing reef that has been building for 20,000 years. Stand on Cape Tribulation beach and you can see coral underwater in one direction and rainforest canopy in the other.

The Great Barrier Reef here is at its most accessible — Cairns and Port Douglas both offer day trips to spectacular reef pontoons, but the best experiences are overnight liveaboard dive trips to the Coral Sea, where walls of coral drop away into blue water and the visibility exceeds 30 metres. Paronella Park, Mossman Gorge, the Daintree River and the Tablelands above Kuranda are all within an hour of the city.

For the truly adventurous, Cape York Peninsula stretches 1,000km from Cairns to the tip of Australia — accessible only in the dry season by four-wheel drive, through some of the most remote and spectacular country the continent has to offer. The Telegraph Track, Jardine River and the Torres Strait Islands make this one of the great Australian overland journeys.