Queensland

Queensland is Australia's tropical state: reef, rainforest, and red earth stacked along a 3,000-kilometre coastline, with Brisbane roughly in the middle and Cape York stretching almost to Papua New Guinea in the north. It's where most Australians go when they want warm water and a guaranteed t-shirt winter, and where most first-time visitors from cooler countries end up before they realise the rest of the continent exists. The pace is slower than Sydney, the humidity is higher, and the beer is colder. Saltrove writers cover Queensland from three angles: the Great Barrier Reef and Cairns in the far north; the Gold Coast and its polarising theme-park-meets-surf culture in the south; and the Brisbane-to-Noosa corridor where most of the country's new-money move-here stories are playing out. If you're planning your first Australia trip, this is probably where you start — and it usually rewards the choice.