2 Best Sights in Great Barrier Reef, Queensland

This interpretive center and museum at the entrance to Cooktown's Heritage-listed Botanic Gardens is home to a valuable collection of local botanical illustrations by internationally recognized artist Vera Scarth-Johnson, and impressive displays of Cape York Peninsula wildlife, bequeathed by local fauna expert Charlie Tanner. Take extra time to wander through the gardens, which, with its stone-pitched waterways and shady paths, include 154 acres of colorful native and exotic plants. A popular attraction in the gardens is a 7-meter python carved locally from ironwood. You can enjoy afternoon tea or a light lunch at the Vera Café; browse the shop of botanically themed gifts and souvenirs, including beautiful scarves, prints and postcards, wooden bowls, and authentic Indigenous art; and get regional travel tips from the on-site Cooktown and Cape York Peninsula Visitor Information Centre.

Offering shade and serenity less than a mile from the CBD, Townsville's colonial-era botanic gardens occupies 10 verdant acres at the base of Castle Hill. Bordered by frangipani (plumeria) and towering Moreton Bay fig trees, whose unique dangling roots veil the entry to the grounds, the gardens are a wonderful place to picnic, stroll, or amuse the kids. There are play areas, a hedge maze, formal rose garden, fountains, and a lovely rain-forest walk. A compact aviary houses bright-plumed peacocks, lorikeets, and sulfur-crested cockatoos.