There are destinations you visit and destinations that reset your sense of what’s possible. Raja Ampat is the second kind. I first heard the name from a marine biologist at a conference in Cairns who had just returned from a…
Palau made a decision in 2020 that I think about regularly when I’m underwater on any reef anywhere in the world. The government declared the entire exclusive economic zone — 600,000 square kilometres of Pacific Ocean — a fully protected…
Gladstone is an industrial port — but it's also the gateway to Heron Island, Lady Musgrave, and the extraordinary southern end of the Great Barrier Reef.
The islands of Raja Ampat rarely appear suddenly. Most travelers approach them by boat, moving slowly through channels of deep blue water surrounded by limestone islands. The first impression is not dramatic coral reefs but a maze of green islands…
Mission Beach is deliberately quiet — and for visitors who want uncrowded reef, endangered cassowaries, and rainforest meeting the beach, that's the whole point.
Townsville is the most overlooked city on the GBR coast — and home to the SS Yongala, one of the greatest wreck dives in the world.
Cairns is the city that reef travel built. Not entirely, obviously — it has a port, a sugar industry history, a regional economy with agricultural roots — but the thing that defines Cairns as a destination, the reason people fly…
Airlie Beach is a sailing town at heart — and from its marina, 74 islands, Whitehaven Beach, and some of the best sailing waters in Australia are within easy reach.
Port Douglas is seventy kilometres north of Cairns and a different world entirely — smaller boats, better restaurants, and the best access to the northern ribbon reefs in Australia.
Most visitors first see the Great Barrier Reef in the middle of the day. Tour boats arrive from the mainland, snorkelers gather along floating platforms, and the water surface is usually textured by wind. It can still be a remarkable…