Cairns An Astonishing Taste Of The Tropics

Cairns and its environs offer a wealth of experiences on Australia’s east coast.

- Sanjay Surana

Asian visitors to Australia’s East Coast often descend on Sydney and Melbourne, teeming metropolises of 5 million with fabulous dining, diverse shopping, and endless entertainment. But Cairns, a carefree city of 150,000 in Tropical North Queensland, has much to excite travellers — plush hotels, polished restaurants, cool bars and numerous natural attractions close by. It is also easily accessible from Singapore via SilkAir’s daily nonstop flight.

The 14th-most populous city in Australia, Cairns was home to Aboriginal people for thousands of years before a British presence grew in the 1860s. The town was officially birthed in 1876 but blossomed a decade later, following the opening of a railway line to the southern town of Herberton that brought immigrants, workers that toiled on the land around Cairns. Today, the city maintains its strong connections to agriculture, drawing on the bountiful produce harvested in the surrounding countryside to stock its fine restaurants and markets. Cairns has a relaxed, seductive ambience, low-rise save for some hotels, offices, and apartment buildings, populated by Art Deco buildings and fringed by a three-kilometre waterfront walk, the Cairns Esplanade.