The "capital" of the Great Barrier Reef could Cairns be called, as the most dive trips start here.
Cairns itself is a cozy city - you can either go shopping the whole day or enjoy a cup of coffee in one of the numerous sidewalk cafes and watch the tourists go by. Gourmets can try out various places as there are restaurants with cuisines from all over the world.
There are also enough places where you can stay overnight: You can find everything from low prices backpacker accommodation to luxury 5-star resorts.
We recommend to spend some extra time in Cairns to have enough time to explore to beaches north of Cairns - you can find white sand beaches conterminous to the beautiful green rain forest - it's quite a miracle of nature!!! Should you prefer deserted beaches you can find them for sure here - anyway we found it here when we visited this place in May 2000.

We booked a three-day liveaboard with MV Kalinda (Pro Dive) to the famous Milln and Flynn Reefs, which are offshore Cairns and also belong to the Great Barrier Reef.
All dives on this trip are easy as there is almost no current around these reefs.
We found beautiful coral gardens with some huge coral sculptures - the corals are so beautiful that it was easy to forget watching the fish swimming by!!! We saw many stingrays, whitetip reef sharks, napoleon wrasse, turtles, huge groupers, trumpet fish and barracudas.
On an early morning dive we had an unforgettable "meeting" with a shoal of bumphead parrotfish, which were still snoozing in front of the reef - unique!