Cairns to Townsville Ultimate Road Trip Guide - Britz

Four nights and 460 kilometres from Cairns to Townsville in a campervan, through the wet tropics in short legs.

The Babinda Boulders come first, a creek running through granite boulders with a swimming hole above the dangerous section, then Paronella Park, a Spanish-style castle and garden built by a Catalan immigrant in the 1930s beside a waterfall, and Innisfail, which has the best art deco streetscape in Queensland because a cyclone flattened the town in 1918.

Tully Gorge follows, in the wettest place in Australia, where the rainfall is measured in metres and the river is used for whitewater rafting, then Mission Beach, where the rainforest meets the sand and cassowaries live in the scrub behind it. The Cardwell Spa Pools come next, a blue-grey creek pool coloured by minerals, with the Hinchinbrook Island lookout nearby, and the Paluma Range and Big Crystal Creek close the route before Townsville and Magnetic Island.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Five days for 460 kilometres is barely any driving at all, which is the point: everything on the list sits within two hours of the next thing. The swimming is the thread, and the creeks here are fresh and safe where signposted, unlike the estuaries. The wet season from December to March brings the rain this country is named for.