IMHO the best place to stay in Cairns is Pat and Mike Woolford's Lilybank B&B. Comfortable, clean, charming quiet, excellent breakfast and built in tour guides for about A$100. double. Also adjacenet to fabulous Garden Room Restaurant. We also enjoyed an excellent seafood feast at Red Ochre.

AndrewDavid

mrsmyers, I suspect the big crustaceans were prawns, not shrimp. (You could almost call them prawn stars...)

Posted this in another thread but we leave for Oz on Monday. Is the Outrigger in Cairns considered to be in the top 3 (Lilybank, Cairns International and Outrigger)? Or is it the Outrigger in Palm Cove that is so nice. Jerry

Jerry - there are presently 2 resort hotels in Cairns city with 5 star ratings - Cairns International(from AU$227 a night) and Sofitel Reef Casino (from AU$235). Cairns Resort by Outrigger (from AUD$162) is rated 4 and a half - its in a very central position (as are the other two) and the newest of these 3. Outrigger at Palm Cove - 4 and a half stars (from AUD$251). There are also 3 Outriggers in Port Douglas.

Lilybank is a B&B and can't be compared with a resort. It's in Stratford, 8km north of Cairns city. Cairns area has a permanent population of only 130,000, so it's not a very big place - whilst 8km out of city from Sydney GPO would virtually still be inner suburbia, 8km in Cairns can be semi-rural (there's still a lot of sugarcane grown in Stratford/Freshwater) - large houseblocks, lots of rainforest, lots of nature.

Forgot to mention - Stratford has become a dining mecca for locals with Garden Room (modern Asian), Lemongrass and Seviche restaurants as well as the local Barron River pub - an old Queenslander hotel with more than acceptable and very reasonably priced meals. Not your usual pub fare, fresh barramundi, double cooked lamb shanks are just a couple of standards.