What a welcome to Sydney. It’s always nice to know your arrival is acknowledged and Sydney pulled out all the stops. Forget the gorgeous heat and unbroken sunshine, forget the easy transition through customs and immigration where only the kids got questioned about what we were carrying (good ploy!) and we were waved through all read on ..

So we find ourselves back near the equator, in tropical jungle, with all the humidity and heat, the rain and the baking sunshine. Its three hours of flying from Sydney to Cairns, though they’re both on the east coast, which goes some way to show just how big the country, nay the continent, of Australia read on ..

Of course, the reason you go to Cairns is to ‘do’ the Great Barrier Reef. The reef, or more accurately series of reefs, stretch 2,000 kilometres along the north east of Australia, covering an area greater than the UK and Ireland put together. There are fringe reefs, ribbon reefs and patch reefs, with continental islands read on ..