Cairns

At low tide the shore below the centre goes to mudflat. Crocodiles work their way into the river mouth, so you do not swim here. A saltwater lagoon was dug beside it instead; lifeguards watch it and you pay nothing. After dark the rim lights up.

Ask which site the boat runs to. Since the bleaching of 2016 and 2017, recovery differs patch by patch. Ninety minutes out from Cairns reaches the outer reef, and you can see it dry from a glass-bottomed boat or a semi-submersible.

At Cape Tribulation the rainforest runs down to the sea and meets the reef. A cable ferry crosses the Daintree River, and because crocodiles live in it, signs tell you to keep out of the water. Cassowaries cross the road, so you stop and wait.

A railway that climbs the gorge through fifteen tunnels dug by hand in 1891. Return by cable car over the rainforest canopy and you see the same country at two heights. Tickets are sold as one package, and they will swap the order if you ask.

In the dry only a few threads run down the rock face; in the wet the entire face runs with water. Photographs of the same spot look nothing alike season to season, and between May and October you look at the gorge more than the fall.

Rainforest has grown on a sand cay built from broken coral, forty-five minutes out from Cairns and thirty minutes around on foot. Coral starts in the shallows, so you swim to it without changing boats.

An hour west and up from Cairns lie two round lakes left by volcanoes. The tableland runs cooler and drier than the shore, so fields and cattle cover it, and a pool under Millaa Millaa Falls is safe to swim. Afternoon cloud rubs out the far shore.

A fruit market open only Friday to Sunday, in a shed in the middle of Cairns. Fruit that grows at this latitude alone is gathered in one place, and if you ask a name they cut a piece off for you. After the middle of Sunday what is left goes cheap.

A beach thirty minutes north of Cairns where paperbark trees grow right to the sand's edge. From November to May a net is set and swimming happens inside it only, and many hire a full suit even then. Irukandji are small enough to pass through the mesh.

A creek twenty minutes inland by car, where water steps down the rock in tiers. This is above the reach of crocodiles, so here you can swim. The pools are another twenty minutes' walk in, and after rain the rock turns slippery.

A rainforest-cloaked island a 45-minute ferry ride out of the Cairns terminal. Coral starts within a few strokes of the beach, and a rehabilitation centre nurses injured sea turtles. Nudey Beach, over the island's northern side, is a forest walk away.

Opened in the city centre in 2017, it follows the tropical north's water in sequence from upland rivers out to the far reef. It is a fair substitute on a wet-season or windy day when boats are off. Wide benches face the big tank.

Tropical gardens in Edge Hill with no admission fee. A boardwalk threads mangrove swamp and lakes, and the Tanks Arts Centre next door turned huge Second World War fuel tanks into venues. Midday brings heat and many mosquitoes, so walk in the morning.

Just over an hour south, a clear creek runs between great granite boulders. Several people have drowned after being dragged into the gaps, so swim only in the pool the signs mark. Babinda, a small town among the cane fields nearby, has a bakery.

Falls below Bartle Frere, Queensland's highest peak; here a flat slab makes a natural slide into the pool. A rainforest path of about twenty minutes leads in from the parking area. Upstream rain swells the creek suddenly; get out once dark clouds gather.

A castle and gardens hand-built in the 1930s beside Mena Creek Falls by José Paronella, a Spanish migrant. His small hydro plant, turned by the falls, made it one of Queensland's early electrified sites. Night tours light the mossy stairs and cascade.