Take A Day Trip To Green Island And Enjoy This Beautiful Coral Cay Covered With Rainforest

Green Island is renowned as one of the most beautiful islands in the Great Barrier Reef and one of Australia's most popular tourist destinations.

The island is covered with dense rainforest, fringed by white-sand beaches and surrounded by coral gardens teeming with marine life. Visitors can swim, snorkel, and dive in the clear waters, view the spectacular reefs in a glass-bottomed boat, explore the forest walkways, and relax on the beaches.

The unique environment of this tropical paradise is recognised as an important ecological area and has been protected as a national park since the 1930s.

The island is an example of a true coral cay, formed over many thousands of years by the build-up of sand and coral rubble on the calm side of a platform reef. Today it is the only cay in Great Barrier covered in tropical rainforest, and more than 120 species of native plants and 60 species of native birds have been recorded on Green Island.

The rainforest can be explored from a boardwalk lined with interpretive panels that describe the natural and cultural history of the island.

Two local Aboriginal tribes used the island for initiation ceremonies for many centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans to the region - and in recent years the ceremonies have been revived in an effort to preserve their unique heritage.

The first pleasure cruises to Green Island started in the 1890s, and it was declared a recreational reserve in 1906. Since then the development of facilities on the island has sought to balance the demands of visitors with the need to preserve the natural environment, both above and below the waterline.

Today there is just one luxury resort on the island with 46 rooms, and camping is not permitted. Most visitors make a day trip from city of Cairns on the Queensland coast - a 45 minute journey by catamaran ferry - or visit the island as part of a boat cruise of this part of the Great Barrier Reef.

There are excellent facilities for day visitors, including several restaurants, a large swimming pool and poolside bar, a health spa, and a dive shop. Operators also offer tandem parasailing, tours of the reefs in glass-bottomed boats, and sightseeing flights by helicopter and seaplane.

The Marineland Melanesia museum and nature park has displays of tribal art from Papua New Guinea and nautical artifacts from Green Island's history, as well as aquariums, giant turtles, and several large crocodiles.

A certified scuba diving school is based on Green Island and organises tours to the best dive sites in the surrounding waters. Underwater explorers can also get close-up with the reefs and sealife by wearing a modern clear-domed diving helmet, and walking on the sandy sea-floor - a style of diving that requires no certification, or even any swimming ability.

The reefs are home to many types of tropical fish and corals, as well as green and hawksbill sea turtles. Dugongs can sometimes be seen near the shore, where they graze on beds of seagrass in the shallows. Humpback whales are often seen near this natural wonderland in the winter months between July and September, after their annual migration from the Southern Ocean to calve and breed in the warm waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

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