Cairns is the capital of tropical Australia and the ideal base for experiencing two of the planet's natural wonders in just a few days: the Great Barrier Reef, only 40 minutes away by boat, and the world's oldest tropical rainforest, which climbs the mountains right behind the city. Few places in the world let you have breakfast in town, snorkel among corals at midday and walk among giant ferns in the rainforest in the afternoon.
The city itself is relaxed, tropical and all about the outdoors. Since the sea off Cairns is all mangroves and jellyfish, instead of a town beach there's a huge free public lagoon on the Esplanade, the waterfront promenade where people swim, jog, picnic and watch the wetland birds. From there the boats leave for the reef, the buses head to Kuranda via the famous Skyrail over the rainforest, and the day trips go to the Atherton Tablelands, the waterfalls and the nearby islands.
This guide covers the best of Cairns with a practical eye: how to get to the reef and what it costs, how to ride the cable car up to Kuranda and come back down on the scenic train, what to see in the city and around it, when to go to avoid jellyfish season, how to get around and how to use Cairns as a springboard to Port Douglas and the Daintree. All verified, so you can plan your trip to the tropical north without any fuss.
Cairns is Gimuy, the name given by its Traditional Owners, the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people, who together with the Yirrganydji (Djabugay-speaking) lived on this coast for millennia. James Cook named Trinity Bay in 1770, but the European town was only founded in 1876, as a port to export the gold discovered on the Hodgkinson River, and took its name from the Governor of Queensland, William Cairns. Sugar cane, the railway to Kuranda and, later, Great Barrier Reef tourism shaped the city. The full story — the Yidinji and Djabugay, gold, sugar cane and tourism — is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of sunshine and the tropics: land of dozens of Aboriginal nations, born as the Moreton Bay penal settlement in 1824, separated from New South Wales in 1859 and shaped by sugar cane, wool and mining. It is home to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, two World Heritage Sites.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before there was a single street, this strip of tropics between the sea and the rainforest already had a name: Gimuy. That is what Cairns is called by its Traditional Owners, the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people, whose presence on this coast goes back thousands of years. The name 'Gimuy' comes from the Yidiny language and, according to local tradition, refers to a plant found in the area (a kind of fig or blue plum). It's a reminder of how deeply this people's identity is bound up with their Country, the land that sustains them.
The region was, and still is, the territory of more than one people. South of the Barron River, Yidiny-speaking groups (Gimuy Walubara Yidinji) predominated; to the north, on the coast running from the Barron towards Port Douglas, lived the Yirrganydji, who spoke dialects of the Djabugay language. These were peoples of an extraordinarily rich land: the tropical rainforest, now a World Heritage Site, gave them fruit, medicinal plants, fibres and game, while the sea, the mangroves and the rivers provided fish, shellfish and turtles.
That abundance supported complex cultures, with finely tuned seasonal calendars, vast botanical knowledge and a network of ties with neighbouring peoples on the tableland and the coast. The Yidinji and Djabugay had their Dreamings (the ancestral stories that explain the origin of the land, rivers, mountains and laws) and sacred sites throughout the region. None of this disappeared when the Europeans arrived. Today the descendants of these peoples hold native title claims over their ancestral lands and work to preserve their languages and culture, which feature in many of the tours visitors take today.
The first European to leave a name here was, as at so many points along the east coast, James Cook. In 1770, sailing HMB Endeavour north, he named the bay Trinity Bay because he passed it on Trinity Sunday. Cook kept going: a little further north he would run aground on the Great Barrier Reef. For almost a century, the Gimuy coast remained Yidinji and Djabugay territory, little more than a line on imperial maps.
The first Europeans to stay arrived in the late 1860s. They were beche-de-mer (sea cucumber) fishermen, who gathered and dried this product, much sought after in Asia. Their presence marked the start of sustained contact, and of conflict too. In 1872 a violent clash broke out between the Yidinji people and the fisherman Phillip Garland over the use of a large native waterhole; the incident gave its name to the place known as 'Battle Camp'. It was just one of many clashes on the colonial frontier, which was especially bloody across North Queensland, with massacres and dispossession that devastated the First Peoples.
Behind the tropical beauty that draws tourists today lies a hard history of resistance and dispossession. The Yidinji and Djabugay lost access to much of their Country, were displaced and, in many cases, forced to live on missions and reserves far from their lands. That their names and stories are heard again today, on the cableways over the rainforest and in cultural centres, is the result of a long struggle for recognition.
The European town was born suddenly, and because of gold. In 1875 gold was discovered on the Hodgkinson River fields, on the tableland to the west. That gold needed a port on the coast to reach the world, and in 1876 expeditions were organised to found one. The surveyor Brinsley G. Sheridan chose a spot on Trinity Bay, and in late 1876 the place was named Cairns, after William Wellington Cairns, then Governor of Queensland.
The early days were extremely tough: a muddy settlement among the mangroves, with heat, humidity and competition from rival ports such as Port Douglas. What saved Cairns was the railway. From 1886, work began on a line up to the Atherton Tableland (heading for Herberton), a heroic feat of engineering that climbed the mountain through tunnels and viaducts carved by hand in the middle of the rainforest. The section to Kuranda opened in 1891 and is now the famous Kuranda Scenic Railway, one of the city's major attractions.
With the railway, Cairns secured its future. The fertile tropical land filled with plantations of sugar cane, bananas and other crops, and the town established itself as the commercial centre of the far north. The Chinese community played a huge, and often forgotten, role in that growth: present from early on in farming and trade, it left a deep mark on the city's economy and life. Sugar cane, with its mills and hard labour (including, in the early years, the trafficking of Pacific Islander workers known as 'blackbirding'), shaped the landscape and society of the north for generations.
The 20th century turned Cairns from a sugar town into a city. During the Second World War, its strategic position in the north made it an important Allied base: airfields, barracks and depots were built, and thousands of Australian and American soldiers passed through on their way to the Pacific. The war left behind infrastructure and a momentum the city would later put to good use.
After the war, Cairns grew on sugar cane, fishing and, more and more, tourism. But the big leap came in 1984, with the opening of Cairns International Airport. Suddenly, travellers from Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas could fly straight to the doorstep of two natural wonders: the Great Barrier Reef, 40 minutes away by boat, and the tropical rainforest of the Wet Tropics. The city reinvented itself as the tourism capital of the tropical north.
The following decades brought a boom in diving and snorkelling operators, resorts, the Skyrail (the cableway over the rainforest, opened in 1995), the revamp of the Esplanade with its big public lagoon, and international recognition for the region: the Great Barrier Reef has been a World Heritage Site since 1981 and the Wet Tropics of Queensland since 1988. Cairns began welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world every year.
Today the city faces a double challenge. On one hand, it has to look after the treasures that sustain it: the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by coral bleaching and climate change, and much of Cairns' economy and identity depends on its health. On the other, it has to keep recognising the Yidinji and Djabugay peoples and giving them back their rightful place, since their ancient culture is an essential part of what makes this corner of the tropics unique. The story of Cairns, from gold and sugar cane to coral and rainforest, is at heart the story of a place that learned its greatest wealth lay in its natural world.
