Australasia > Australia > Queensland > Cairns > Forest > Articles > Between Reef and Rainforest

We first glimpsed the atolls from five miles high. Turquoise patches stitched onto a green sheet, and beneath us, the even darker green of the rain forest.

Cairns is a thriving town with a population of about 70 000. It is spread out across a strip of plain between dense tropical forest and the Pacific Coast. To north and south lie mangrove swamps and trees reaching to the sea’s edge. It boasts an international airport, and is ideal as the first or last port-of-call for the visitor to Australia.

During our brief stay, we compromised as regards meals. Our hotel breakfast buffet would keep us going throughout most of the day. Evenings saw us heading elsewhere, not to save money, but to experience something of the uniqueness of the town. Darkness falls early in the tropics, but with the dusk, comes the cosmopolitan bustle of the night market: sushi bars, pizza parlours, Chinese take-aways, Thai restaurants. Whatever your taste in food, Cairns has it. And the malls would satisfy even the most incurable shopping addict. Prices are low, and genuine bargains abundant.

We spent an afternoon at Port Douglas, about thirty miles north of Cairns. This is much quieter than Cairns, though in its own laid-back way more attractive. Despite its almost sleepy atmosphere, it offers activities that include golf and sailing, and is a better centre for the exploration of the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation regions. At the nearby Hartley Creek Crocodile Farm, crocodiles are bred for food and their skins. Their wild relatives are used for neither. A few very large individuals were on display, having been brought here from estuaries and beaches where they posed a threat to humans.

Another day saw us take the Skyrail to Kuranda. This is a spectacular four-and-a-half-mile cable car ride over dense rain forest canopy, much of it more than a hundred feet above the forest floor. The air was humid, and it was with some relief that we paused at the two stations on the way to explore tracks through the lush environment, one of which opened out quite suddenly to reveal the gorge and waterfalls of the Barron River.

Kuranda itself is a small, hill village of a few hundred inhabitants, completely surrounded by jungle. It consists almost entirely of an alternating series of shops selling opal jewellery or aboriginal art, punctuated by the occasional café. Though very much a tourist village, it had about it an extremely pleasant and relaxed atmosphere, and dispersed its tourists to the extent that it appeared almost deserted.

The return trip was by railway through the Barron Gorge. This was built to service the mining camps of the Atherton Tableland, and the old-style carriages and stations retain something of their early romance. The wild-west-film spectacle of trestle bridge, waterfall and tree-covered canyon, that characterised most of the journey, eventually gave way to flatland and sugar cane plantation before we arrived back in Cairns.

But it was those green patches out to sea that proved most insistent of a visit. We had been advised not to go to the popular Green Island, which suffers from the effects of too many tourists, so we opted for an alternative destination. A fast catamaran took us to Fitzroy Island, a Robinson Crusoe-type retreat, about an hour’s journey from Cairns. A further forty-five minutes brought us to a pontoon anchored at Moore Reef. The sea was a little rough on the outward trip, but the shallow waters of the reef showed hardly a ripple.

I had never snorkelled before, but from the first five seconds, it was magic. The water was clear, and warmer than a swimming pool. All the superlatives I had heard about the coral colours of the Barrier Reef and its fishes were true. I had bought a disposable waterproof camera in Cairns, and clicked away with it like a lunatic. After an hour, I returned to the pontoon for a buffet meal, included in the cost of the trip, then re-entered the water for another hour. This time, I hovered over the reef’s edge, where the cliffs appeared bottomless, and the fish were even more abundant and profligate in their colours. Three shimmering cuttlefish swam just beneath me, while more circumspect creatures peered out of small caves. While I was in the water, Therese, who does not swim, was enjoying the same sights through the floor of a glass-bottomed boat.

Because of its latitude in tropical North Queensland, Cairns suffers from some monsoon weather, but its year round heat means that many Australians choose it for their winter holidays. Its proximity to a wide variety of natural attractions, and their ease of access give it the edge over other towns on the east coast. Had we more time, we could perhaps have gone white-water rafting, or canoeing, or possibly have learned to scuba dive. We might do these on our next visit.

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