This post is published in collaboration with Flight Centre.
Last year Emmie and I headed off on a little trip around Tropical North Queensland. We adore exploring Asia but Australia is our home, and wow – our gorgeous country has so much natural, breathtaking beauty.
We can’t wait to see more, especially up north in sunny Queensland. Up there, in one day you can go from the reef to the rainforest – and there are so so many waterfalls to discover.
We loved swimming on the Great Barrier Reef – Emmie is such a great little snorkeler now and of course swimming on the Reef is definitely a Bucket List item for most of us. We also love, love, love the Southern Great Barrier Reef too, especially Lady Elliot Island.
Josephine Falls and swimming hole is only about 90 minutes out of Cairns and is a lovely spot for a family picnic and a dip in the waterholes. You can easily spend the whole day here, jumping from pool to pool.
I think everyone knows our favourite island – the environmentally-focused, stunning little Lady Elliot Island, just off the coast in the southern Great Barrier Reef. Here you can swim with friendly turtles in the lagoon, spot skittish reef sharks and see mantas and bigger sharks out in the open water. You can also spot whales here and even the occasional whale shark.
We also loved just driving around, looking at the cane fields and the wide open skies, and stopping at rivers to jump in and cool off with local kids.
The coastline and inland is all so diverse and there is so much more to do – we have only scratched a tiny part and we cant wait to see more.
I’ve been using Flight Centre’s Queensland Travel Guide to check out everything there is to do in Queensland. I love this calendar because it sets everything out by month and tells you the best things to do – from cattle musters to whale spotting, the best beaches and island cruising.
And I’ve made a commitment that we will start exploring our own country more – even if it’s just one adventure per year. Here’s our top three – we have to have down at least one of these adventures by July 2019…
Spot humpack whales
The whale migration from June to August, when Humpback Whales travel up the coast from Antartica and shelter in Queensland’s Hervey Bay. It looks amazing – and seeing whales breach is just breath-taking. Even just spotting them is super exciting, we see them traveling up the coast here in NSW and it’s just incredible.
See turtles hatching
We were on Lady Elliot one year when turtles began to hatch but we had to leave so I could get back to work the next day. I always regret not staying and so this is definitely on our Bucket List. The best time of the year is from January to March, in the evening.
Swim with manta rays
The bets time to do this is between May and August when huge manta rays are swimming around the coast here in Queensland. We were so lucky to see about 20 of these gorgeous creatures at Lady Elliot one year as they swam past us on a feeding line. It was spectacular.
There is definitely a theme above – but we will also be checking out Queensland’s incredible Daintree Rainforest and waterfalls and enjoying its stunning beaches.
What’s your favourite place to visit in Queensland?