Our Queensland holidays & tours
Our Queensland holidays explore the Australian state home to the magnificent Great Barrier Reef, as well as rainforest in Lamington National Park, where you can stay in an ecotourism retreat tucked away in the trees.
Wildlife watching is a major focus of our Queensland tours, and professional local guides show you around different ecosystems, highlighting the problems they face but also the inspiring success stories. Our holidays help by recording sightings of everything from humpback whales to tree kangaroos, and passing the data on to conservation research projects. While accommodation is in lodges that are engaged in reforestation projects, and that use renewable energy and water technologies.
As you travel from Lamington to Tully Gorge National Park, the Atherton Tablelands to Echo Creek Falls, our guides can describe and pay tribute to the Aboriginal traditional custodians of the land, such as the Mullunburra people. Our trips include cultural experiences offered by Aboriginal businesses helping to sustain and spread awareness of the Dreamtime belief system. It all adds up to a royally rounded take on Queensland, its nature and its people.
Wildlife watching is a major focus of our Queensland tours, and professional local guides show you around different ecosystems, highlighting the problems they face but also the inspiring success stories. Our holidays help by recording sightings of everything from humpback whales to tree kangaroos, and passing the data on to conservation research projects. While accommodation is in lodges that are engaged in reforestation projects, and that use renewable energy and water technologies.
As you travel from Lamington to Tully Gorge National Park, the Atherton Tablelands to Echo Creek Falls, our guides can describe and pay tribute to the Aboriginal traditional custodians of the land, such as the Mullunburra people. Our trips include cultural experiences offered by Aboriginal businesses helping to sustain and spread awareness of the Dreamtime belief system. It all adds up to a royally rounded take on Queensland, its nature and its people.
Queensland Rainforests & Great Barrier Reef wildlife holiday
Queensland reefs & rainforest wildlife watching
From
£5995
17 days
ex flights
Australia tour, outback & reef
Tailor-made Tour to Australia's Coast, Outback & Reef.
From
£6895
25 days
inc UK flights
Sydney to Cairns self drive holiday
City stays, campervan and rainforest experiences.
From
£8591
27 days
ex flights
Australia wildlife holiday with Tasmania
Spot mammals in Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland
From
£5995
16 days
ex flights
Australia Coast small ship cruise
An unforgettable journey sailing around Australia
From
£4697 to £14555
11 days
ex flights
Queensland map & highlights
At over seven times the size of the UK, and two and half of Texas, you can be forgiven for being at a bit of a loss as to where to start in Queensland. Our advice? If you’re going to fly all that way, then stay as long as you can. Be warned, you’ll still not see it all. Barely any of it in fact – as most holidays will take you along a ribbon of rainforest and reef-lined coast, while the vast sun-dried interior remains the domain of enormous cattle stations and barely-there dusty mining towns. The Great Barrier Reef warrants a week, and you’ll want to include Aboriginal-led tours inland into the ‘outback’ – the Daintree Rainforest, Atherton Tablelands or Lamington National Park - where a generations-old connection with nature will lead you to platypus playing in secluded creeks and tree kangaroos hiding in the canopy.
1.
Brisbane
2. Cairns
3. Cooktown
4. Daintree Rainforest
5. Fraser Island
6. Great Barrier Reef
7. Lamington National Park
8. Whitsunday Islands
2. Cairns
3. Cooktown
4. Daintree Rainforest
5. Fraser Island
6. Great Barrier Reef
7. Lamington National Park
8. Whitsunday Islands
Brisbane
1. Brisbane
Queensland’s state capital – and Australia’s third-largest city - basks in the warm glow of its subtropical climate and glorious gold-sand beaches. But look past the skyscrapers and you’ll find a thriving live-music scene and the largest modern art gallery in Australia. Park up in one of the city’s tropical gardens or chill out on the riverside South Bank parklands, where art installations reverberate to the sound of local bands.
Cairns
2. Cairns
A once boggy swamp turned modern, tourist-centric, city, Cairns swelters in the stifling tropical heat. Functional and busy, rather than beautiful, you’ll end up here on most Queensland holidays thanks to its proximity to reef and rainforest – and its airport and transport network. If you’re taking a small ship cruise plying the northern sections of the Great Barrier Reef, you’ll likely start and end in Cairns.
Cooktown
3. Cooktown
Technically Australia’s first non-indigenous settlement (Captain Cook’s crew spent 48 days here making repairs to the Endeavour after it hit a reef off Cape Tribulation), what tiny, colonial Cooktown lacks in size it makes up for in history. Stroll through its lush botanical gardens – home to wild wallabies and kangaroos – and learn more about its significant role in Australian colonial history in the fascinating James Cook Museum.
Daintree Rainforest
4. Daintree Rainforest
The world’s oldest continually-surviving rainforest – so old that dinosaurs would have enjoyed the same scenery - the Daintree is a tangled steamy prehistoric jungle that, uniquely, abuts the Great Barrier Reef. This biodiversity hotspot is not only home to some of Australia’s most endangered wildlife – including the fearsome cassowary – but a deep spirituality. Tours with local guides reveal the forest’s stories through Aboriginal eyes.
Fraser Island
5. Fraser Island
The most famous residents of the world’s largest sand island is a population of around 200 dingoes. They are protected - an important part of the local ecosystem and, isolated from cross-breeding with feral and domesticated dogs, of significant conservation value. Paddle in Eli Creek, banked by dunes, or take a dip in impossibly-clear Lake McKenzie – ringed by bright white sand beaches.
Great Barrier Reef
6. Great Barrier Reef
The world’s longest barrier reef needs little introduction. This epic marine masterpiece covers 344,400km2, incorporating over 3,000 coral reefs, 600 continental islands, 300 coral cays and 150 inshore mangrove islands. In terms of biodiversity it outshines all other UNESCO World Heritage sites around the world and its importance to the global ecosystem is nigh-on incalculable. It goes without saying that swimming, diving and snorkelling here, when done responsibly, is glorious.
Lamington National Park
7. Lamington National Park
Just an hour inland from the surf breaks and high-rises of the Gold Coast lies steamy Lamington National Park. A staggeringly biodiverse patch of rugged mountainous rainforest, Lamington is home to a vast array of colourful birds, panoramic rocky lookouts, caves, waterfalls and an excellent network of hiking trails – including a tree-top canopy walk – to help you explore it all on foot.
Whitsunday Islands
8. Whitsunday Islands
This small archipelago of coral islands lies towards the southern – and currently more pristine – end of the Great Barrier Reef, accessed from buzzing Airlie Beach. Your best bet is to explore by boat, by which you can access private moorings on the reefs for sublime snorkelling, or simply soak up the white sand beauty from the water as you enjoy a buffet lunch on board.
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