I'll be doing an overnight boat trip to the reef, but then spending 2 nights in Cairns. Are there any nice beaches to swim in, or any islands that are close by and can be done in a day trip?
Any advice would be most appreciated - it is very hard to tell by looking at the websites what are good beach locations!

Hi,
Cairns has no real beach, but if you move up the coast 30 mins to Palm Cove you will find arguably one of the nicest beaches in Australia.
If it's islands you want there are plenty of posts about them here, personally I would avoid green island like the plague, but you must consider and make your own mind up, read some of the posts here about it.
You don't say when you plan to be there but consider the stingers around this time of year. Swimming is pretty much out of bounds but Pat will surely be along soon to advise you of that.

Have fun

Muck

The area along the Cairns coast has a jellyfish problem (not so out on the reef, I'm told). Fortunately the area around the city is mud flats, so no one swims there anyway.

There are box(?)jellyfish that breed in the estatuarys then go along the coast. Anywhere with a beach has some sort of netting (so I hear) to keep them out. You may still want to keep the antidote to pour on your skin (vinegar? I forget. Or was it urine?) so your swim does not end in death.

All in all, from what I heard, go somewhere much farther south (Brisbane & Gold Coast? Sydney?) for your beaching adventures. This is probably why most web sites are quiet about beaches.

There's a season that they are worst, but from what I heard you probably don't want to swim there anyway.

Anyone have better knowledge of this issue?

I'll leave it to the Queenslanders to expound on this with more authority. However, while vinegar may be a traditional treatment for bluebottles, the little blue stingers sometimes encountered on Sydney beaches, I have grave doubts that it would deal with the consequences of being stung by a box jellyfish, a.k.a. Portuguese Man o'War. I would not place my faith in urine either, leaving aside the distasteful complications involved in its application.

I echo Mucky's comment about Green Island. It seemed to us to be entirely devoted to squeezing the highest possible profit margin out of unwitting Japanese tour groups and we felt that our day would have been much better spent almost anywhere else in the area.

We stayed in Palm Cove, specifically because Cairns doesn't have beaches. Our hotel in Palm Cove had wonderful pools, but we went out on the beach often. If I recall, there were nets to protect from jellyfish and/or sharks, but we only enjoyed the beach and never bothered with the water. You can take the bus up to Palm Cove and spend the day on the beach. The Skyrail is nearby also.

Suburban patrolled beaches with stinger nets north of Cairns city LGA are: Holloways, Yorkeys Knob, Kewarra, Trinity, Clifton, and Palm Cove. After that in Douglas Shire is Ellis (patrolled) a string of other beaches which aren't, all the way to Port Douglas, which is. My personal favourite is Ellis, just north of Palm Cove. The suburban bus route stops at Palm Cove, so you'd really need a car rental for Ellis - only about 30 mins north of the city. It's better protected from wind than any of the others, and with exception of one van park no suburban or tourist infrastructure.

Cairns was not originally designed as a tourist town, it was the major shipping port for timber and sugar cane in the north. For deep water anchorage of ships the vast inlet off the harbour was dredged. The resulting mud spread over what was a sandy beach (I have a photo of it taken around 1900). These Cairns mudflats, whilst not very appealling to the tourist eye, now sustain so much migratory bird life that it is one of the top birdwatching sites in the world. Now Cairns City Council became sick of tourists whingeing about lack of sandy beach- so at vast expense to the ratepayer has built a huge, safe, clean lagoon right in the middle of the tourist area on the Esplanade.

ijason, you don't say when you're coming, so box jelly fish dangers may not apply - Nov-April is the time of year they appear on northern coastal waters. Venomous jelly fish are not exclusive to Australia's tropical waters, they're also found in mass tourist destinations of Indonesia, southern Thailand etc. Funny how tourists aren't told about them there. Vinegar is NOT an antidote, all it will do is deactivate stinging cells which may remain - if you are unlucky enough to be stung, yell for a lifeguard. On every patrolled beach you will find bottles of vinegar, under the sign which explains other dangers, ie possibility of crocs.

How I wish I was warned about Green Island before we went to Cairns

Re: Lagoon in Cairns - yes, it was very nice and we surely enjoyed it.

ijason1 - from memory the box jelly fish inhabits coastal waters (beaches & inlets), they tend to breed in mangrove/muddy areas, and usually when the n/easterly winds are blowing, they will be found along the beaches. The water temperature has a lot to do with it also, which explains why they are found in summer months. Pat is right, vinegar only helps neutralise the remaining stinging cells left on your body. You should seek medical help or get someone to do it for you. The stinger nets do help in regard to box jelly fish, but not with the irrikandgi (not sure it that is the correct spelling), as these tiny jelly fish, are about the size of your thumb, and can easily go through a stinger net. Some tourists have been stung by these little irrikangis on continental islands, like Great Keppel, etc, but generally not on the outer barrier reef.
If its stinger season up Cairns way, and you want to swim off beaches like Holloways, Palm Cove, etc, it may pay to look at wearing a stinger suit (depending on what time of the year it is)
Box jelly fish are found all the way from Cape York, right down to about Rockhampton/Gladstone.
The beaches from Bundaberg down, including Hervey Bay, Rainbow Beach (a gem of a place)Sunshine Coast, and Gold Coast, do not get irrikangi, nor box jelly fish, which are the two most dangerous jelly fish, but down south of Bundaberg, there is always the possibility of a blue bottle sting, but these are not life threatening stingers.
The biggest problem in my part of Qld, is that overseas tourists enter the surf, without knowledge of rips & undertows, and quite often drown.

That's right trop - box jelly fish do breed in coastal mangrove estuaries, then go out to sea a little way, vary rarely as far as GBR. NE will blow them back onto beaches- which is a terrible shame because the NE breeze in summer here is delightful and stops us all going insane in summer. There's only been two fatalities attributed to irukandji - both victims had previous heart conditions and many more have died from bee-sting reaction. I grew up on a Sydney surfing beach and had a friend hospitalised from blue-bottle sting which wrapped its tentacles around her bikini exposed midriff. One irukandji fatality was in Whitsundays and the other off Port Douglas. Agree a stinger suit would help on suburban beaches you mentioned, but they're not much use when crocodiles are about in the same season as jelly fish.

North Queensland beaches, whilst almost almost empty of people once you get away from suburban areas are nothing like the surfing beaches of Queensland and NSW - they're protected by reef and consequently there is no surf. A lovely place to have an early morning or evening stroll.

As tropo says, rips and undertows claim far more victims that crocodiles, jelly fish, sharks combined, which is why, anywhere in Australia it is only safe to swim in patrolled areas between the safety flags.

Sorry, meant to say beaches of Queensland south of GBR.

whilst we are talking about nasty critters in our waters we should also mention to keep an eye out for two other lethal ones being the Stone Fish and the Blue Ringed Octopus. The Stone Fish is found predominantly around the mid to north Qld coastal regions. There are usually warning signs erected at places where they are in large numbers such as at Elliot Heads near Bundaberg and at Agnes Waters.

The Blue Ringed Octopus can be found all along the east coast so be careful with the kids around rock pools which is where they like to frequent. he kids think they look interesting with their iridescent blue rings and immediatly go to pick them up. If you see one then leave it alone, if you do see one and you see the blue rings then beware this is the creatures warning mechanism and generally means that it is preparing to bite. They can be found from Southern WA, to southern Qld and northern Tasmania.

Cheers

Paul_S