Destinations

Cairns lacks Sydney's drama and Melbourne's grandeur — what it has instead is the Great Barrier Reef ninety minutes offshore and a town built entirely around getting you there.

Exmouth is 1,260 kilometres north of Perth by road, reachable by a domestic flight that takes about two hours, and most Australians have not been there. This is entirely understandable given the distance. It is also, I would argue, one…

The outer reef begins to change long before the sun actually reaches the horizon. During the middle of the day the sea often feels energetic. Boats move between dive sites, wind ripples the water surface, and the bright overhead sun…

Yukon, tucked away in the northwestern corner of Canada, presents a landscape that feels almost otherworldly. The territory’s vast expanses of wilderness, punctuated by rugged mountains and pristine rivers, invite a deeper exploration beyond the typical tourist path. Here, the…

The Whitsundays is the only part of the Great Barrier Reef where the reef is not the primary thing. This is not a slight — it’s a description of what makes the region genuinely distinctive. The 74 continental islands, the…

The Maldives is one of the most written-about reef destinations on Earth and also one of the most consistently misrepresented. The promotional version — overwater bungalows, turquoise shallows, photogenic isolation — is real in the sense that those things exist.…

Broome is a town that exists at the edge of several worlds simultaneously and has developed, over a century of multicultural history, a character that doesn’t quite resemble anywhere else in Australia. At the end of the nineteenth century, Broome…

The first thing I usually notice on the Great Barrier Reef in the early morning is the silence. Boats have not started moving yet, the wind has not built across the water, and the reef often feels suspended between night…

Townsville is the largest city in North Queensland and the most underrated reef destination in Australia. I say this knowing that it will strike most people who’ve been to Cairns as a puzzling claim. Cairns has the infrastructure, the international…

Remote coral reefs rarely feel impressive at first glance. When boats approach them from open water, the reef may appear as little more than a faint line of breaking waves or a small strip of sand surrounded by blue sea.…