Huge, tropical and remote, the great triangle of Cape York combines tropical rainforest, pristine beaches and the Great Barrier Reef with its high eastern coast and rugged escarpments, sweeping savanna and isolated cattle stations in the interior and the Gulf Country. Unfolding vistas of tropical sea and rainforest-clad hills make the journey from Cairns to the World Heritage-listed Daintree wet tropics one of the most amazing in the country.

Beyond here, extraordinarily varied landscapes and the challenge of reaching the most northern point of mainland Australia attract 4WD adventurers from around the world. Cairns, with an international airport, is a major tourist centre, and the resort town of Port Douglas is very popular.

The steep coastal range, which in places rises sheer from the sea, is the result of a massive up-thrusting of the ocean floor between 60 and 200 million years ago. Rainfall here is heavy, arriving mainly in a monsoonal deluge between December and April (the Wet), and the peaks are almost permanently mist-shrouded. The dense vegetation on the slopes of the Daintree is recognised as the oldest continually surviving rainforest community on the planet. While eastern-flowing rivers tumble swiftly to the sea; those heading west wind between avenues of forest and, when flood-swollen, spill in a shallow sea across the sparsely vegetated plains of the Carpentaria Basin. By the end of the dry season (around October), bushfires often sweep across these now-parched lands.

The region's rich resources have sustained Aboriginal people for more than 30,000 years. Sandstone escarpments near Laura, west of Cooktown, shelter fabulous galleries of their rock paintings, in one of the richest bodies of rock art in the world. The 1870s discovery of gold around the Palmer River drew more than 20,000 goldseekers, many of them Chinese, to mine in difficult tropical conditions. Cooktown, Cairns and Port Douglas grew to service the fields. The hill town of Kuranda, west of Cairns, lies at the end of one of the country's most scenic rail journeys; in its steep climb to the edge of the Atherton tableland, the tiny train crosses the face of Stoney Creek Falls and passes through fifteen hand-cut tunnels.