Our 7 Month Travel Blog

From Brisbane we flew to Cairns in Far North Queensland (or FNQ as we’ve been told by Casey!). You realise how massive Australia is when you take a 2.5hr flight and travel over 870 miles but are still in the same state!

Cairns has a tropical climate and is known as a gateway to some of Australia’s most iconic natural attractions: the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest.

Being closer to the equator it’s known for its very hot weather. In summer temperatures can consistently reach 40°C… luckily we were visiting in winter (which is peak season), where the weather is warm, dry and a lot less humid.

We arrived in Cairns and went to our hostel which was right on the esplanade.

We’d opted for a dorm to keep costs down, figuring that we would spend most of our time out and about exploring!

The room grew on us over the week and we made friends with our Korean roommate who gave us lots of recommendations! (Update: Korea is now on the list for November!)

The hostel did have an amazing rooftop leading off of the kitchen!

It was also directly opposite Cairns lagoon.

As Cairns is in Tropical North Queensland AKA ‘croc country’, the river systems in the area have saltwater crocodiles (the largest living reptiles on earth!). Although they don’t live in the sea, they have been known to swim around to the beaches for lunch! So swimming in the sea is not allowed…

It’s clear there’s a significant risk though as no one seems particularly bothered by the sharks around Australia, but no one’s in the water in FNQ! The lagoon on the esplanade is the go-to swimming spot…

We spent a few days exploring Cairns city itself. Highlights included visiting the harbour,

sunset drinks at the local brewery,

and doing the Saturday morning Parkrun.

From Cairns we also visited Green Island, which is 27km off the coast of Cairns in the Great Barrier Reef marine park. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, with the most diverse marine life.

We spent the day on Green island, where we snorkelled from the beach to the coral just offshore. There were loads of huge, brightly coloured fish and some impressive coral.

On our way back to Cairns, we spotted a pod of whales. We were lucky that they were able to drive the ferry right over to where they were and had a great view of them breaching and swimming along.

We could tell this didn’t happen very often as some of the crew also had their phones out filming.

Whilst in Cairns we also took the Scenic Railway to the rainforest village of Kuranda.

The railway passed through waterfalls and bridges on the way to Kuranda.

Kuranda was a small village with markets in the rainforest. On the way back down, we took the Skyrail cableway, a 7.5km gondola which goes back through the rainforest. Bit of a throw back to the gondolas in the Alps… just a tad less snow!

We really enjoyed our time exploring Cairns and the surrounds! Next stop further up the coast to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Rainforest!