A year after moving to Darwin, we went looking for more of the tropics — and found them in Cairns. Tropical North Queensland is one of those rare places where two world wonders sit side by side: the oldest rainforest on earth in one direction, the Great Barrier Reef in the other.
We'd traded the big city for the north precisely for places like this — wild, warm, and gloriously over the top. Cairns delivered.
Two of the planet's best, in one trip
The reef is the kind of thing that resets your sense of scale. You spend your whole life seeing it in photos and documentaries, and then you're actually in the water, and none of the photos did it justice. And then you dry off, drive a little, and you're under a rainforest canopy that's been growing since the dinosaurs.
Some places make you feel big. The tropical north makes you feel small in the best possible way.
The north suits us
What we loved about Cairns wasn't just the headline stuff. It was the confirmation that moving north had been the right call. The heat, the green, the slower pace, the sense that the best of Australia is up the top where fewer people bother to go.
We came home to Darwin tired, sunburnt, and completely sure we were living in the right corner of the country.
