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Way Up North
For many people Cairns is Australia's forgotten city. Some 2,000 kilometres by road from Sydney it is a distant fourth in terms of the country's most visited locations, behind it's bigger southern rivals: Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. All the same, Cairns has a huge amount to offer visitors, and with many reasonably priced flights to Australia avaialble at the moment (from around £700 at http://www.dialaflight.com/flights/australia, now's a great time to visit.
Cairns itself is a relatively small city, of no more than 150,000 people, there's a lot to see and do. A lot is focussed around the waterfront, which is well known for it's swimming lagoon and adjoining barbecue areas. The city is also a great place to check out some of the best of Australian sport in a more relaxed atmosphere than you might find in some of the big southern cities.
The major reason to visit Cairns, however, is the amazing wilderness that you find around it. The city is a great staging post for visiting just about any type of landscape you can imagine. Towards the top of that list is Lake Tinaroo, an enormous man-made lake that lies to the south-west of Cairns. Tinaroo is found in the Atherton Tableland, which is well into the tropics and is an attractive destination for people looking for a bit of the great Australian outdoor. The Tableland is well known for two other lakes, in addition to Tinaroo, Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham, the latter of which is locally famous for the Aboriginal story of it's creation which has an oral tradition dating back 12,000 years.
The Wet Tropics
The Atherton Tableland as a whole is just part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, an enormous area of land featuring some of the best landscape and rambling that Australia has to offer. There are no fewer than six national parks in the area, of which the most famous are Barron Gorge (the waterfall is an astonishing site, and unlike more or less any other waterfall you're likely to see) and the Black Mountains.
All of this is without mentioning the single biggest attraction of Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef. Visible from space, the largest living structure in the world, and worth over $1 billion dollars a year in tourist trade, the Reef's reputation speaks for itself. Unfortunately, changes in sea temperature and fertiliser finding it's way into the sea has done a lot of damage to the Reef in recent years and parts of it are dying at a shocking rate, so there's really no time like the present for seeing one of the wonders of the world.
Cairns may not be the perfect city for those looking for a city break, but if you want to explore some of the greatest wilderness in the world, and of course the astonishing Great Barrier Reef, it might just be your perfect destination.
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