Stuck in a northern tropical city, my workday routine became a dream

June 4, 2026 — 5:00am

CLANG! Imagine the sound of a huge steel door slamming shut in a wall around the city of Melbourne. That’s the sound I imagined on hearing the announcement of the fifth COVID-19 pandemic lockdown (of what turned out to be a series of six) in July 2021.

However, for a change, I was situated outside that notional door. I was in Cairns, Queensland, at the end of a week-long travel writing assignment.

Was I going to fly back into the arms of a lockdown in the middle of the southern winter? No way. I quickly phoned Cairns’ YHA hostel, whose manager I knew, and arranged a discounted en suite room for seven nights. Then, having moved my backpack there from the fancy resort room I’d just vacated, I pondered how to structure the coming work week.

This is how it ended up. Each morning I’d leave the hostel and have a leisurely breakfast at one of the cafes on Grafton Street, which tended to cater more for locals than tourists (favouring the Japanese-influenced dishes of local hero Caffeind, especially its excellent miso scrambled eggs). Then I’d slip through the Oceana Walk Arcade past its funky retro record stores and bookshops, walk through Woolworths to buy a sandwich ahead of lunch, then end up at Cairns City Library. This public institution is contained partly within a beautiful 1920s council office building surrounded by a tropical park; and in 2021 its trees were still home to a colony of flying foxes, at sunset a noisy reminder to the passer-by that you weren’t in Kansas any more (so to speak).

I’d work in the library for a few hours via my iPad and portable keyboard, then inevitably in the late afternoon I’d pack up and go for a swim in the nearby Cairns Esplanade Lagoon. This landmark is an artificial (but very pleasant) saltwater swimming pool complete with beach, its edge overlooking the unswimmable mudflats of Trinity Bay.

As an adapted tropical-strength version of my weekly work habits – which in Melbourne involved public libraries but not saltwater lagoons – I did not see how this routine could be bettered, and it made me ponder what living permanently in Cairns might be like. Could I possibly move here? Would this new work schedule inevitably lose its lustre over the months and years? And could I really afford a cooked cafe breakfast every day?

The lockdown soon ended and I flew back south, of course; but it made me wonder what might have been.

For anyone who knows me well, this wistful daydreaming of life in a Far North Queensland tourism hub would seem strange. I am, after all, a big-city-living, black-clothes-wearing, long-black-drinking person who fits perfectly into the inner-city Melbourne milieu.

And let’s be honest, Cairns is a city devoted to tourism. Most businesses a street or two back from its coastal frontage are dedicated to tourists’ needs, whether they be a water-facing balcony, a tropical fruit-laced cocktail, or a feed of fresh seafood. Many of the more practical retailers frequented by locals are crammed into a shopping mall set well inland. I usually loathe such tourist-focused towns, preferring places off the usual trail, so it’s the type of destination I’d normally steer clear of.

Cairns, however, makes it all mesh in a way which is never overwhelming and always relaxing. The CBD area is flat and walkable; there’s good food to eat, including tropical fruit from Rusty’s Market; the airport is only a short hop away; and there’s a surprisingly cosmopolitan mix of people to meet, be they well-heeled international visitors, backpackers on a working holiday visa, or Thursday Islanders down from the Torres Strait trying their luck in the big city. Best of all, there’s that big artificial lagoon, free for anyone to swim in.

Over time I’ve tried all the great attractions in and around the city: trips out to islands and the reef; the cable car over the rainforest; the scenic train that heads to Kuranda and back; and excursions to the towns of the Atherton Tableland. Overall, however, to echo Dennis Denuto from that hit Melbourne-set movie The Castle, Cairns’ greatest drawcard is “the vibe”. There’s a prevailing atmosphere to Cairns which somehow lets the city elude the hustle of tourist hubs elsewhere. There’s a chilled pace in the daily routine, and a sense of “You be you”.

Though undeniably touristy, this tropical city lets me be a more relaxed person when I visit. And somewhere through the folds of space and time, in a parallel dimension, there’s another version of myself living my best Cairns life: clad in a colourful Hawaiian shirt, drinking cold brew coffee to suit the climate, writing in the library, and swimming in the lagoon every day. I hope he’s enjoying the vibe.