Things to do in Cairns

Cairns is a city of around 160,000 people, 1,700 kilometres north of Brisbane and, oddly, closer to Port Moresby than to Sydney. Most visitors land at Cairns Airport, 7 kilometres from downtown, and head straight for the reef or the rainforest, but the city itself has enough for a day or two either side of a trip.

The Esplanade waterfront is a mudflat at low tide, not a beach, which is why the free, lifeguard-patrolled Cairns Esplanade Lagoon has drawn swimmers since it opened in 2003.

Add Rusty's Markets on weekends, an aquarium, a small museum, botanic gardens, and a cruise terminal on Trinity Inlet, and Cairns works as a base rather than a detour.