Quick search
CTRL+K
Quick search
CTRL+K
Cairns is a lovely and relaxed town in tropical Northern Australia. It is also the gateway to many boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef and all the unforgettable experiences of snorkeling and simply enjoying the beauties of the reef.
Cairns is a relatively young city with its founding in 1876. Since then, the city has grown into a regional metropolis, and there are many beautiful buildings from Cairns’ first years during its development. These include public buildings and several Queensland-style architectural hotels.
There are many experiences in Cairns where you can, for example, take a swim in the Cairns Esplanade Lagoon, which lies along the city’s distinguished promenade along the sea. Here you will also find shopping, restaurants and various activities.
In the vicinity of Cairns, nature is always close by. Of course, this applies to the Great Barrier Reef, but also to the beautiful inland, where the city of Kuranda is a good destination for an excursion. From here you can experience the Barron Gorge National Park.
Cairns Esplanade is a fashionable street that runs along the coast in central Cairns. The street offers a string of shops, restaurants, boat moorings, playgrounds, works of art as well as a number of other amusements and nature experiences. It is a must to take a walk here and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere when you are in the city.
Cairns Esplanade was the first street in the city to be surveyed. It happened in 1876, and then the street was called Troughton Esplanade after Captain Fred Troughton of the Australian Steam Navigation Company. Over time, the street was built over, and today you can enjoy the Esplanade Lagoon and, of course, also observe the wildlife with not least a number of birds along the esplanade.
Esplanade Lagoon is a popular feature of Cairns city centre. The city is breathtakingly beautiful along the sea, but the risk of encountering saltwater crocodiles and firefighters means that it is not advisable to swim from the city’s beaches, and this is where the Esplanade Lagoon along Cairns Esplanade street comes into the picture.
Esplanade Lagoon is a place where you can drink the warm salt water in safety without visitors other than bathers. It is a huge swimming pool which has been built in the middle of the city. A trip in the water is free, and then you can also relax on the lawns around the lagoon and just enjoy life.
The Cairns Art Gallery is an art museum that is recognized as one of Australia’s foremost regional art museums. The museum makes a point of showing a wide and varied range of works of art, not least of which are local artists from northern Queensland. Changing exhibitions are arranged at the museum, so there is always something new to see here.
The idea for the art museum arose in 1979, and in the following years many preparations were made before the museum could open its doors in 1995. Among other things, a fine location had been found, which was in one of Cairns’ old public administration buildings. It was designed in its time by the government architect R.C. Nowland and built 1934-1936. The building retains much of the fine original interior.
Cairns Botanic Gardens is a beautiful botanical garden located close to the center of Cairns. The garden is a tropical oasis with its multitude of beautiful flowers and exciting plants, where you can experience the 70 kilo Amorphophallus Titanum among others. All in all, Cairns Botanic Gardens is a tropical paradise.
The beautiful garden was laid out from 1886, with Eugene Fitzalan being one of the first to establish the beautiful facilities you can enjoy today, with the garden known as one of the best displays of tropical plants in Australia. On a visit, one can explore the beauty of tropical plants, relax in stunning surroundings and learn about tropical flora and horticulture.
Lake Street is the name of the main thoroughfare in Cairns. Here you can take a walk and experience a high concentration of period buildings from the large expansion of Cairns in the first decades of the 20th century. It is especially the stretch between Spence Street and Shields Street that you should see, and you can also look down the side streets.
At the Lake Street/Spence Street intersection you can see Earl Court from 1926, The Boland Center from 1912-1913, Quaid’s Real Estate from 1910 and the Central Hotel from 1909. At the Lake Street/Shields Street intersection is the Cairns Museum in the former School of Arts from 1907, Hides Hotel from 1928, Lannoy House from 1927-1928 and the Qantas Building from 1923 on the street corners.
Cairns Museum is a city museum in Cairns, and it is also a good introduction to the city and the area. Here you can experience exciting exhibitions and depictions from the beginnings of the aborigines to today’s modern city in the tropical north through interesting depictions, effects and good structures of the themed exhibitions.
The museum is housed in the former educational building, the Cairns School of Arts, which was built from 1907 as a place where adults could improve their skills in, not least, technical subjects. The school building had verandahs typical of tropical Australia and also had shops and offices for rent as sources of income.
Cairns Aquarium is a modern aquarium that opened in 2017 with, among other things, Australia’s largest freshwater tank. In the aquarium you can experience ten different ecosystems, and thereby there is a colossal variety in the experiences of fish and much other marine life, which the Cairns region itself is so rich in nature.
On a visit to the Cairns Aquarium, you can, for example, take a closer look at the life around the Great Barrier Reef and deeper reefs. There is also an oceanarium and aquariums and the area from freshwater, rivers and mangroves. The rainforest and the world of reptiles are also represented, and in this way you experience part of the region’s diversity.
Boland’s Centre is a department store building that was built in 1912-1913 by Michael Boland, who was one of Cairns’ best-known citizens of the time. Boland had arrived from Ireland in Cairns in 1881, and he became one of the city’s leading merchants, who among other things was one of the initiators of the development of the port in Cairns.
Michael Boland’s department store was built in an area that first had to be drained. At the corner of Lake Street and Spence Street, Boland built three stories as the first house in the town, and the result was a fine department store, noted among other things for its selection and for the elevators installed in the house. Today, the old department store still stands out as one of Cairns’ most beautiful structures.
The Bishop’s House is a building that was built in 1930 as a Catholic monastery. It was at a time when several Catholic institutions were established in the city; eg the monastery and a school. Today, the elegant building serves as the residence of the local bishop.
Originally, the Cairns region belonged to the Bishopric of Brisbane, but with the founding of the city, the area from Cardwell to Cape York was separated as North Queensland. Three priests went to the area and in 1885 they established the parish of St Monica in Cairns and the parish church was built on the site of the Bishop’s House today.
St Monica’s Old Cathedral is a former Romanesque cathedral built in 1927 with an attached Catholic school. In 1968, the church was replaced as a cathedral by the larger St Monica’s Cathedral, which at the time was built as a modern church.
The cathedral from 1927 was a major extension of the city’s Catholic Church, whose congregation until then used the old St Monica’s Church from 1886, which had been destroyed during a cyclone. The old church was a wooden church that had otherwise been expanded in line with the growing city.
St Monica’s Cathedral is Cairns’ Roman Catholic cathedral. The parish was established in 1885 and the first St Monica’s Church was opened in 1886, while the second and now former cathedral was completed in 1927. This makes the modern and current cathedral from 1967-1968 the city’s third cathedral.
St Monica’s is a large church with an open and bright nave where you can see quite a few stained glass windows. From the outside, the high round arches with matching bell tower dominate the design. Incidentally, St Monica’s is the only cathedral in Cairns, as the Anglican episcopal seat is in Townsville.
St Joseph’s Convent is one of Cairns’ many structures in the Catholic building complex around St Monica’s Cathedral. The monastery was built 1912-1914 as a nunnery for the Sisters of Mercy, which as an order institute was founded in Dublin in 1831.
The Sisters of Mercy were active in Cairns from 1892 and had their seat in two smaller houses before the current convent was completed in 1914. It was the architect and engineer Edward Gregory Water who was responsible for the design, which, among other things, features gabled houses with wrap-around verandahs typical of Queensland.
Hides Hotel is one of Cairns’ large, beautiful hotel buildings from the period between the world wars of the 20th century. The elegant hotel was built in 1928 and for a number of years stood next to the Cairns Hotel from 1885. The now demolished Cairns Hotel was the starting point for Lake Street as part of the city’s commercial centre.
The Hides Hotel was designed by Sydenham Stanley Oxenham for the O’Hara family, who belonged to the city’s well-known civil servants. When it opened, the hotel was one of the largest buildings in Cairns and one of only two with three floors. Hides Hotel is of course modernized today, but you can still build some of the original interior and a lovely atmosphere on, for example, the covered veranda.
The Barrier Reef Hotel is an old and charming hotel that was built as the Empire Hotel in 1926 by Carl Peter Jorgensen. In those years Cairns grew, and the hotel was built with faith in the city’s future with new harbor facilities etc. The hotel replaced an earlier hotel from 1898 and is the closest building to where Cairns’ town plan was originally laid out and measured from.
This part of Cairns was developed as the city’s business district in the late 1800s, where warehouses, public administration, hotels, forwarding offices, etc. were built. The Empire Hotel was relatively modest and built not least for workers in the port areas. The hotel got its current name in 1960.
The Jack & Newell Building is one of the famous old buildings in Cairns. In this central city location, Trinity Wharf was located in the early 1900s, and the Jack & Newell Building was erected in 1911 as the new offices of Fearnley and Company.
Jack and Newell were two businessmen from Queensland, and in 1939 they acquired the building, which they owned until the 1970s. Since then, high-rise buildings with apartments have been built on the site, and they chose to preserve the old facade.
Cairns City Council Chambers is a neoclassical building that was built in the years 1929-1930 as the seat of Cairns city government. The beautiful building replaced a former wooden Town Hall and since 1999 has served as the Cairns City Library.
The beautiful Town Hall was built at a time when Cairns was established as the region’s leading port city, and this gave rise to a growth that changed the town centre, which previously consisted of many smaller wooden houses. The design was carried out by the local Hill & Taylor. They worked in Cairns 1927-1933, after which they continued their work in Townsville.
Cairns War Memorial is a monument that was erected in 1925. The monument was erected in honor of those who fought in the First World War. The memorial was moved to its current location in 1972 and it indicates the time 4.28. It was at this time that ANZAC troops arrived at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
The monument is built as an obelisk with a soldier statue on top, and it stands as a cenotaph, which is also the case in many other Australian cities. During the First World War, a high proportion of Australian men became casualties, wounded and captured, and this affected the country and all small and large communities.
Cairns Customs House is the city’s customs building, which was one of the new buildings during the great building boom in Cairns in the 1920s and 1930s. They chose to build the city’s customs building, as the old wooden customs house had become too small for Cairns, which in the early 1930s had grown to be Queensland’s third largest port city.
Cairns Customs House was built in 1936-1937 to designs by Robert Henry Bowen. The construction was part of the public investments in connection with the depression in the 1930s. Over the years the house was no longer used as a customs building and in the 1990s the Cairns Customs House was incorporated as part of The Reef Hotel Casino.
The first customs house in Cairns was built in 1877, which was the year after the establishment of the city’s port. The second version of Cairns Customs House was built in 1899 and the 1937 version was designed as the third by Government Architect Robert Bowen with offices on the ground floor and accommodation on the first floor. The house was used as a customs building until 1989, and since then it was built together with The Reef Casino.
Cairns Masonic Temple is the city’s Masonic Temple. The first Masonic meeting in Cairns took place at the Hides Hotel in 1885 and the following year the Freemasons opened their first lodge in the city. In the 1920s, five more masonic lodges were established in Cairns. They met in a house in Lake Street which was destroyed in the cyclone that hit the town in 1927.
In these years, a so-called District Grand Lodge was established in Carpentaria with headquarters in Cairns. The new Grand Lodge wanted to build a worthy temple in the city, and the Cairns Masonic Temple was erected in 1934-1935. Today, the temple no longer functions as a Masonic lodge, as the building was purchased by the Catholic Church in 2017.
The Cairns Post is a beautiful old building, built to its original size in 1908. The current structure is the result of an extension in 1924, and it stands along the main thoroughfare Abbott Street with a colonnaded classicist facade.
The Cairns Post was built as the seat of The Cairns Post newspaper, and the building therefore has no connection with the neighboring building, which was built as the Cairns Post Office. It was Harvey Draper who designed the house. Draper was one of the best-known Cairns architects of the time.
Cairns Post Office is a building erected on the corner of Abbott Street and Spence Street in 1937. The current building on the site was erected as the city’s fourth post office and the third on this site. The first two were built in 1886 and 1907 respectively.
The post house was built with inspiration from the art deco architecture of the time. However, it has been changed since its construction, and today it houses various shops. However, you can still see the old sign with the words Cairns Post Office on the facade.
Adelaide Steamship Company Ltd. was a shipping company founded in Adelaide, South Australia in 1875. It started sailing on the coast of Queensland in 1893 and the company established an office in Cairns in 1905. It was a time of booming traffic in the port of Cairns and the city’s port continued the growth with the excavation of a channel to Trinity Inlet.
The shipping company acquired a plot of land in 1907, and they hired local architect Howard Draper to design the building, which was erected in 1910 along the main street, Lake Street. The house was designed to stand in the tropical climate of northern Queensland.
Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest system of coral reefs. In total, over 2,900 individual reefs and almost 1,000 islands form a coral belt more than 2,000 kilometers long along the Australian north-east coast. The reef is located in the Coral Sea, which has been named after the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef has long been known and used by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and is an important part of the culture and spirituality of local groups. The Englishman James Cook was the first European to see the Great Barrier Reef. It happened in 1770, when Cook mapped the east coast of Australia.
It was Matthew Flinders who gave the name Great Barrier Reef after his more detailed mapping of the reef in 1802. Flinders used different terms to describe the reefs that comprise what we now call the Great Barrier Reef. Some reefs were given the designation great reef, while others were defined as barrier reefs. It was they who prevented a sailing ship or waves from the open sea from reaching the shore.
The Great Barrier Reef is defined as the long chain of coral reefs that stretches between Bramble Cay in the north and Fraser Island in the south. It is a colossal area which stretches along many kilometers of uninhabited coastline. It is thus mainly the parts of the reef that are near larger cities such as Cairns that are visited.
The Great Barrier Reef supports an extraordinary diversity of life. This also applies to many vulnerable or threatened species, some of which may be endemic to the reef system. Among other things, thirty whale species, large populations of dugongs, more than 1,500 different kinds of fish, sea snakes and several different species of sea turtles have been recorded.
In addition, close to 5,000 species of mollusks such as the giant clam, sharks, rays and many other animals have been recorded on the reef. Around the reef there is also an abundance of fauna. Saltwater crocodiles live, for example, in mangroves and salt marshes on the coast near the reef. There are also more than 200 bird species that visit or live on the reef. The islands of the Great Barrier Reef also support over 2,000 known plant species.
There are several places where you can visit the Great Barrier Reef. In the northern part of the reef, Cairns is a good starting point, from where you can sail to places like Michaelmas Cay, Fitzroy Island National Park and Frankland Island. A little further south, you can sail to the reef from Tonwsville, while Bundaberg is a good bet for one of several southern destinations from which you can experience the Great Barrier Reef.
With the short distance to the Great Barrier Reef from the port of Cairns, the North Australian city can well be called the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. And every day a fleet of boats sail out to islands and sandbars, where you are usually on a full-day trip with several hours to snorkel on the reef and go for walks on the sandbar or island you are visiting. You can often also dive and see the reef in glass-bottomed boats.
Kuranda is a small town located on the Atherton Tableland northwest of Cairns. It’s about. 3,000 inhabitants in Kuranda, which is surrounded by the area’s tropical climate. The rainforest and especially the Barron Gorge National Park have made the town a popular excursion destination, which in itself is also pleasant to go for a walk in. Kuranda was settled in 1885, and in 1891 the railway came here, and since then the town has been well visited.
From arrival on the Kurana Scenic Railway or Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, one can stroll along the main street of Coondoo Street and also see the city’s famous Kuranda Markets along Thooree Street, which opened in 1978. There is also a beautiful walk along the Barron River by the River and Esplanade Walk . In the city, there is also a lot of street art and many artists and art, which flourished with the arrival of many hippies here in the 1960s.
In and around Kuranda, there is also a wide range of experiences and activities where you can get close to the lush nature in several ways. Among other things, you can see Australia’s rich wildlife in several places, get closer to the traditions of the area’s aborigines and be shown around the rainforest. The trip to Kuranda from Cairns is an experience in itself, which is usually done with the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway and the Kuranda Scenic Railway.
The Skyrail Rainforest Cableway is a cableway that connects Smithfield Terminal north of Cairns with the town of Kuranda on the heights of the Atherton Tableland over 7.5 km. The course was built from 1994 and opened the following year as the longest gondola lift in the world. The journey between the end stations is divided into three separate parts, changing along the way, and there are magnificent views all the way.
A ride on the cable car’s gondolas is unforgettable as you pass close above the treetops on the 90-minute ride. Along the way, you can stop and go at the rainforest at the Red Peak stop and at Barron Falls and Barron Gorge at the Barron Falls stop. You can take the cable car both to and from Kuranda or enjoy the Kuranda Scenic Railway on the outbound or return journey.
The stop at Red Peak allows for an interesting walk through the rainforest along a boardwalk built to get around and see different types of plants and trees as well as a viewpoint. There are ongoing tours with a ranger who explains about what you see. At the Barron Falls stop, you can go to two different lookouts, from which there are panoramic views of the Barron Gorge and the Barron Falls.
Kuranda Scenic Railway is a 37 km long railway which opened between Cairns and Kuranda in 1891. The track was laid on a gauge of 1,067 mm and it was constructed with 15 tunnels and 37 bridges on the way from sea level to the location of Kuranda for 328 meters height.
The construction of the railway was a major engineering undertaking, and construction work continued for many years. The purpose of the railway was to connect Cairns with mining areas to the west of the city for shipping from the city’s port. After a few decades, however, the track was increasingly used for visits to the highlands.
The first tourist train ran on the line in 1936 and today it is mainly tourists who use the line to see the impressive scenery along the Barron River and in the Barron Gorge National Park. The train runs primarily west of the Barron River, and along the way there are views of Stoney Creek Falls and Barron Falls, where there is a special stop with the opportunity to get off the train to enjoy the view.
Barron Gorge is a beautiful national park with a lush and varied landscape, with the Barron River and Barron Gorge as natural focal points. The Barron River at this point passes the eastern part of the Atherton Tablelands and has a drop of 265 meters at the beautiful and impressive Barron Falls. The falls are among the highlights of the park.
Barron Gorge National Park is easily accessible and many make the trip to the park and waterfalls on either the Kuranda Scenic Railway or the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway. The railway connects the cities of Cairns and Kuranda, and on the 37 km long track you can see the nature of the national park. You can also do that with the 7.5 km long cable car ride, Skyrail, where you reach Kuranda over the treetops and the Barron River.
Mossman Gorge is a gorge that was created by the Mossman River, whose crystal clear waters hit granite rocks in a particularly beautiful setting of tropical rainforest. Mossman Gorge is part of the Daintree National Park.
The rainforest is part of the experiences of a visit to Mossman Gorge. Shuttle buses run from the visitor center to various hiking trails with boardwalks through the green areas. You can take a walk along the Mossman River with nice viewpoints, and there is also a walk around the rainforest.
North of Cairns is the Daintree National Park, which is divided into Mossman Gorge south of the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation north of the river. Cape Tribulation is a place where you can experience the rainforest literally meeting the sea.
After crossing the Daintree River, you are in the middle of the rainforest and along beautiful beaches until Cape Tribulation itself. From the Cape Tribulation car park you can walk along the Kulki Boardwalk to beautiful views of the sea, rainforest and mountains, and from the same point the Myall Beach Track leads to Myall Beach.
274 Mulgrave Road, Westcourt
dfocairns.com.au
Abbott Street
537 Mulgrave Road, Earlville
stockland.com.au
CBD, Esplanade, Lake Street
Birdworld Kuranda
8 Rob Veivers Drive, Kuranda
birdworldkuranda.com
Kuranda Scenic Railway
Cairns Railway Station, Bunda Street
ksr.com.au
Skyrail Rainforest Cableway
6 Skyrail Drive, Smithfield
skyrail.com.au
Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures
Captain Cook Highway, Wangetti
crocodileadventures.com
Cairns Esplanade Lagoon
Esplanade
Cairns ZOOM and Wildlife Dome
Wharf Street
cairnszoom.com.au
Cairns’ modern history began on June 10, 1770, when seafaring explorer James Cook sailed into the area and named it Trinity Bay. The name came from the fact that the discovery happened on exactly Trinity Sunday. Cook steered his ship Endeavor into the bay and went ashore for a time at the discovery. After this it was 1819-1821 before Phillip Parker King sailed the waters and visited Fitzroy Island off the later Cairns. And in 1848 the Trinity Bay area was surveyed by an expedition led by Captain Owen Stanley.
However, none of these first expeditions led to the establishment of a residence. It was not until the 1860s that fishermen settled in what became something resembling a permanent settlement at Cairns’ current location. In 1872, William Henn went on an expedition to Palmer River, where he discovered a large gold deposit. The discovery of gold was announced in 1873 and it brought many settlers to northern Australia. They established the site, which became the first European settlement in this part of the country.
James Mulligan published an even larger gold find in the Hodgkinson River in 1876. It was located a good 120 kilometers west of Trinity Bay on the Atherton Tableland, and in the same year the Douglas Track was established, leading from Trinity Bay to the area of the large find. At the same time, William Smith established another road to the Hodgkinson River finds, and his route was called Smith’s Track. The best site for a waterfront town was examined and the choice fell on the place where the Douglas Track began.
Officials came to Trinity Bay and set up a tented camp around the present intersection of Esplanade and Spence Street. And on October 7, 1876, William Wellington Cairns, who was the Governor of Queensland, proclaimed the establishment of the new city and port and that it was named after the Governor. On 1 November, the town was inaugurated at an event on board the ship SS Victoria, and at the beginning of the following year the sale of plots of land in the new town began. A sawmill was quickly established, which among other things produced building materials.
Other settlements were also established in the area and traffic to the Hodgkinson River disappeared from Cairns as Port Douglas a little to the north took over the role of the town with easiest access to the known mining areas, but Cairns grew nonetheless. It happened after the establishment of some agriculture with a significant sugar production, where Cairns became a shipping port. In 1886 a railway opened between Cairns and Herberton and it brought further growth to the town which became the hub for the railways in the region.
With the railways, more settlers came to Cairns, and they increased the demand for more new towns from which farming could be carried on, and thereby, among other things, Kuranda was surveyed and established. Sugarcane was grown in the lower-lying areas, while fruit was grown on the Atherton Tableland, for example. There were quite a few Chinese immigrants who also cultivated crops such as rice and corn. Industry also started, and there was production of sugar south of the city, to which a railway was opened to Cairns.
Cairns formally became a city in 1903, and at that time approximately 3,500 people lived in the city. That number steadily increased as did the construction and activities in Cairns. Among other things, shops and hotels were built, and the city had renewed infrastructure such as water supply and a new hospital. World War 1 meant a decline in growth with Cairns’ relatively isolated location, but particularly from the 1930s there was renewed growth in the city. It was also during this time that the later infamous cane toad was introduced from South America. It happened in the sugar cane fields south of the city.
The outbreak of the Second World War made it necessary to build new roads from Cairns to the west, so that it was possible to evacuate the population in the event of an attack from the sea side. The road was built to Kuranda and opened in 1942, and during the war Cairns was used not least by the United States in connection with the Pacific War. Some residents sold their houses and moved south, but many did not move back after the end of the war. The city’s population was temporarily down to approximately 7,000, but this number quickly began to rise again in the post-war years.
In the 1950s, tourism to Cairns started. This happened, among other things, with the arrival of the air-conditioned train called The Sunlander from Brisbane and from the film There’s A Future For You in Far North Queensland, which spread awareness of the city. Cairns became further known in 1954 when Queen Elizabeth II visited the city on her tour of Australia. In the official film from the Queen’s visit, there were a number of scenes from Cairns, and thereby knowledge of the city reached large parts of the world.
Tourism grew strongly over the decades since then. This happened with new hotel buildings and with the construction of Cairns International Airport in 1984. Today, more than 150,000 inhabitants live in Cairns, and a significant part of the city’s income comes from tourism. There is a warm tropical climate which attracts many visitors, and in addition to the city’s own sights, many tourists come here to see the beautiful surroundings with the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns as the biggest and most famous attraction.
Overview of Cairns
Cairns is a lovely and relaxed town in tropical Northern Australia. It is also the gateway to many boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef and all the unforgettable experiences of snorkeling and simply enjoying the beauties of the reef.
It is a relatively young city with its founding in 1876. Since then, the city has grown into a regional metropolis, and there are many beautiful buildings from the first years during its development. These include public buildings and several Queensland-style architectural hotels.
About the upcoming Cairns travel guide
About the travel guide
The Cairns travel guide gives you an overview of the sights and activities of the Australian city. Read about top sights and other sights, and get a tour guide with tour suggestions and detailed descriptions of all the city’s most important churches, monuments, mansions, museums, etc.
Cairns is waiting for you, and at vamados.com you can also find cheap flights and great deals on hotels for your trip. You just select your travel dates and then you get flight and accommodation suggestions in and around the city.
Read more about Cairns and Australia
Buy the travel guide
Click the “Add to Cart” button to purchase the travel guide. After that you will come to the payment, where you enter the purchase and payment information. Upon payment of the travel guide, you will immediately receive a receipt with a link to download your purchase. You can download the travel guide immediately or use the download link in the email later.
Use the travel guide
When you buy the travel guide to Cairns you get the book online so you can have it on your phone, tablet or computer – and of course you can choose to print it. Use the maps and tour suggestions and you will have a good and content-rich journey.
Esplanade • Flecker Gardens • Kuranda • Great Barrier Reef
Overview of Cairns
Cairns is a lovely and relaxed town in tropical Northern Australia. It is also the gateway to many boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef and all the unforgettable experiences of snorkeling and simply enjoying the beauties of the reef.
It is a relatively young city with its founding in 1876. Since then, the city has grown into a regional metropolis, and there are many beautiful buildings from the first years during its development. These include public buildings and several Queensland-style architectural hotels.
About the upcoming Cairns travel guide
About the travel guide
The Cairns travel guide gives you an overview of the sights and activities of the Australian city. Read about top sights and other sights, and get a tour guide with tour suggestions and detailed descriptions of all the city’s most important churches, monuments, mansions, museums, etc.
Cairns is waiting for you, and at vamados.com you can also find cheap flights and great deals on hotels for your trip. You just select your travel dates and then you get flight and accommodation suggestions in and around the city.
Read more about Cairns and Australia
Buy the travel guide
Click the “Add to Cart” button to purchase the travel guide. After that you will come to the payment, where you enter the purchase and payment information. Upon payment of the travel guide, you will immediately receive a receipt with a link to download your purchase. You can download the travel guide immediately or use the download link in the email later.
Use the travel guide
When you buy the travel guide to Cairns you get the book online so you can have it on your phone, tablet or computer – and of course you can choose to print it. Use the maps and tour suggestions and you will have a good and content-rich journey.
The Bishop’s House is a building that was built in 1930 as a Catholic monastery. It was at a time when several Catholic institutions were established in the city; eg the monastery and a school. Today, the elegant building serves as the residence of the local bishop.
Originally, the Cairns region belonged to the Bishopric of Brisbane, but with the founding of the city, the area from Cardwell to Cape York was separated as North Queensland. Three priests went to the area and in 1885 they established the parish of St Monica in Cairns and the parish church was built on the site of the Bishop’s House today.
St Monica’s Old Cathedral is a former Romanesque cathedral built in 1927 with an attached Catholic school. In 1968, the church was replaced as a cathedral by the larger St Monica’s Cathedral, which at the time was built as a modern church.
The cathedral from 1927 was a major extension of the city’s Catholic Church, whose congregation until then used the old St Monica’s Church from 1886, which had been destroyed during a cyclone. The old church was a wooden church that had otherwise been expanded in line with the growing city.
St Monica’s Cathedral is Cairns’ Roman Catholic cathedral. The parish was established in 1885 and the first St Monica’s Church was opened in 1886, while the second and now former cathedral was completed in 1927. This makes the modern and current cathedral from 1967-1968 the city’s third cathedral.
St Monica’s is a large church with an open and bright nave where you can see quite a few stained glass windows. From the outside, the high round arches with matching bell tower dominate the design. Incidentally, St Monica’s is the only cathedral in Cairns, as the Anglican episcopal seat is in Townsville.
St Joseph’s Convent is one of Cairns’ many structures in the Catholic building complex around St Monica’s Cathedral. The monastery was built 1912-1914 as a nunnery for the Sisters of Mercy, which as an order institute was founded in Dublin in 1831.
The Sisters of Mercy were active in Cairns from 1892 and had their seat in two smaller houses before the current convent was completed in 1914. It was the architect and engineer Edward Gregory Water who was responsible for the design, which, among other things, features gabled houses with wrap-around verandahs typical of Queensland.
Hides Hotel is one of Cairns’ large, beautiful hotel buildings from the period between the world wars of the 20th century. The elegant hotel was built in 1928 and for a number of years stood next to the Cairns Hotel from 1885. The now demolished Cairns Hotel was the starting point for Lake Street as part of the city’s commercial centre.
The Hides Hotel was designed by Sydenham Stanley Oxenham for the O’Hara family, who belonged to the city’s well-known civil servants. When it opened, the hotel was one of the largest buildings in Cairns and one of only two with three floors. Hides Hotel is of course modernized today, but you can still build some of the original interior and a lovely atmosphere on, for example, the covered veranda.
The Barrier Reef Hotel is an old and charming hotel that was built as the Empire Hotel in 1926 by Carl Peter Jorgensen. In those years Cairns grew, and the hotel was built with faith in the city’s future with new harbor facilities etc. The hotel replaced an earlier hotel from 1898 and is the closest building to where Cairns’ town plan was originally laid out and measured from.
This part of Cairns was developed as the city’s business district in the late 1800s, where warehouses, public administration, hotels, forwarding offices, etc. were built. The Empire Hotel was relatively modest and built not least for workers in the port areas. The hotel got its current name in 1960.
The Jack & Newell Building is one of the famous old buildings in Cairns. In this central city location, Trinity Wharf was located in the early 1900s, and the Jack & Newell Building was erected in 1911 as the new offices of Fearnley and Company.
Jack and Newell were two businessmen from Queensland, and in 1939 they acquired the building, which they owned until the 1970s. Since then, high-rise buildings with apartments have been built on the site, and they chose to preserve the old facade.
Cairns City Council Chambers is a neoclassical building that was built in the years 1929-1930 as the seat of Cairns city government. The beautiful building replaced a former wooden Town Hall and since 1999 has served as the Cairns City Library.
The beautiful Town Hall was built at a time when Cairns was established as the region’s leading port city, and this gave rise to a growth that changed the town centre, which previously consisted of many smaller wooden houses. The design was carried out by the local Hill & Taylor. They worked in Cairns 1927-1933, after which they continued their work in Townsville.
Cairns War Memorial is a monument that was erected in 1925. The monument was erected in honor of those who fought in the First World War. The memorial was moved to its current location in 1972 and it indicates the time 4.28. It was at this time that ANZAC troops arrived at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
The monument is built as an obelisk with a soldier statue on top, and it stands as a cenotaph, which is also the case in many other Australian cities. During the First World War, a high proportion of Australian men became casualties, wounded and captured, and this affected the country and all small and large communities.
Cairns Customs House is the city’s customs building, which was one of the new buildings during the great building boom in Cairns in the 1920s and 1930s. They chose to build the city’s customs building, as the old wooden customs house had become too small for Cairns, which in the early 1930s had grown to be Queensland’s third largest port city.
Cairns Customs House was built in 1936-1937 to designs by Robert Henry Bowen. The construction was part of the public investments in connection with the depression in the 1930s. Over the years the house was no longer used as a customs building and in the 1990s the Cairns Customs House was incorporated as part of The Reef Hotel Casino.
The first customs house in Cairns was built in 1877, which was the year after the establishment of the city’s port. The second version of Cairns Customs House was built in 1899 and the 1937 version was designed as the third by Government Architect Robert Bowen with offices on the ground floor and accommodation on the first floor. The house was used as a customs building until 1989, and since then it was built together with The Reef Casino.
Cairns Masonic Temple is the city’s Masonic Temple. The first Masonic meeting in Cairns took place at the Hides Hotel in 1885 and the following year the Freemasons opened their first lodge in the city. In the 1920s, five more masonic lodges were established in Cairns. They met in a house in Lake Street which was destroyed in the cyclone that hit the town in 1927.
In these years, a so-called District Grand Lodge was established in Carpentaria with headquarters in Cairns. The new Grand Lodge wanted to build a worthy temple in the city, and the Cairns Masonic Temple was erected in 1934-1935. Today, the temple no longer functions as a Masonic lodge, as the building was purchased by the Catholic Church in 2017.
The Cairns Post is a beautiful old building, built to its original size in 1908. The current structure is the result of an extension in 1924, and it stands along the main thoroughfare Abbott Street with a colonnaded classicist facade.
The Cairns Post was built as the seat of The Cairns Post newspaper, and the building therefore has no connection with the neighboring building, which was built as the Cairns Post Office. It was Harvey Draper who designed the house. Draper was one of the best-known Cairns architects of the time.
Cairns Post Office is a building erected on the corner of Abbott Street and Spence Street in 1937. The current building on the site was erected as the city’s fourth post office and the third on this site. The first two were built in 1886 and 1907 respectively.
The post house was built with inspiration from the art deco architecture of the time. However, it has been changed since its construction, and today it houses various shops. However, you can still see the old sign with the words Cairns Post Office on the facade.
Adelaide Steamship Company Ltd. was a shipping company founded in Adelaide, South Australia in 1875. It started sailing on the coast of Queensland in 1893 and the company established an office in Cairns in 1905. It was a time of booming traffic in the port of Cairns and the city’s port continued the growth with the excavation of a channel to Trinity Inlet.
The shipping company acquired a plot of land in 1907, and they hired local architect Howard Draper to design the building, which was erected in 1910 along the main street, Lake Street. The house was designed to stand in the tropical climate of northern Queensland.
Similar to Cairns Travel Guide
