I married the Australian. The rest is a very long travel story.

Hi, I’m Mackenzie. My husband is Australian, and these days we bounce back and forth between Cairns, Australia and Atlanta, Georgia, usually with another adventure somewhere in between.

Cairns isn’t just somewhere we’ve visited a few times and decided to write about. Our family has been local to the Cairns and Far North Queensland area for around 40 years. We’ve lived there, worked there, explored there, taken visiting friends around, and accumulated the kind of recommendations that only come from years of actually knowing a place. So when we tell you somewhere is worth the drive, the swim, the booking, or the slightly questionable dirt road, the recommendation does not come lightly.

Why Indy’s Post exists

This little corner of the internet started because our friends and family kept asking us the same question: “What should we do when we go to Cairns?”

When we lived there full time, we could just show them around ourselves. Now that we aren’t always there to play tour guide, I wanted somewhere to put all of the good stuff we keep sending people individually.

So this is essentially our very opinionated collection of places we genuinely love: where to eat, where to stay, where to swim, where to hike, where to dive, what tourist attractions are actually worth doing, and even a few good public fishing spots. The truly secret fishing spots are staying secret. I do have to remain married, after all.

Local favorites, tourist things and everything in between

One of the funny perks of living in a tourist town was getting local rates for tourist attractions. And you know what? A lot of those attractions are touristy because they’re genuinely fantastic.

We’ll absolutely tell you to get out on the Great Barrier Reef. We’ll also tell you where we actually like to eat afterward. You’ll find beautiful hotels and special occasion spots here, but we are definitely not luxury travelers all the time. Some of our favorite trips involve a tent, a four wheel drive, a campfire and a road that gets progressively less convincing.

Beyond Cairns

Cairns and Far North Queensland are where Indy’s Post begins, but they’re not the end of the story.

We’re adventure junkies who love camping, overlanding, fishing, hiking, diving and getting properly off the beaten track. We’ve spent weeks making our way up Cape York to the northern tip of mainland Australia, traveled around Tasmania, and spent our honeymoon sailing through the Whitsundays for a week. And because Atlanta is our other home base, there will eventually be adventures from Georgia and elsewhere mixed in too.

Some posts will be practical guides you can use to plan a trip. Others may read more like pages pulled from a travel journal. That’s intentional. This isn’t meant to be a generic list of the “Top 10 Things to Do.” It’s the stuff we would actually tell our own friends and family to do.

A note on our recommendations

If something appears here, it’s because we genuinely think it’s worth sharing. Some posts may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you book or purchase through one of those links, at no additional cost to you. Affiliate relationships do not determine what makes it onto Indy’s Post.

Places change, roads close, weather turns, businesses change hands, crocodiles occasionally decide to ignore where humans think they should be, and Far North Queensland has a way of reminding you that nature is in charge. Always check current conditions and use your own judgment, especially for swimming, hiking, boating, fishing, diving, camping and remote travel.

Come along

If you’re planning your first trip to Cairns, coming back to visit family, heading north with a four wheel drive, or just looking for somewhere ridiculously beautiful to swim, I hope you find something here that makes the trip better.

Consider this the list we’d send you if you texted us and said, “Okay, we booked the flights. Now where do we go?”