Michaelmas Cay

Michaelmas Cay is barely there — a low crescent of sand no more than a few hundred metres long, sitting on a reef platform out from Cairns, and it holds one of the most important seabird rookeries on the entire Great Barrier Reef. As the boat approached I noticed the sound before I noticed the island itself, a rising static of squawks and cries that got denser the closer we got, until the cay resolved into view as a moving, shrieking carpet of sooty terns, common noddies, and crested terns packed shoulder to shoulder on every available patch of sand.

Access to the cay itself is restricted to a roped boardwalk area to protect the breeding colony, which is exactly as it should be — this is one of the most significant seabird nesting sites in the region, with numbers running into the tens of thousands during peak season, and getting too close would be an act of real vandalism. I stood at the rope line for a while just watching the sheer density of birdlife, a specific kind of overwhelming that has nothing to do with the ocean at all.

The real appeal for most visitors, myself included, is what surrounds the cay rather than the cay itself — a reef platform with some of the most accessible, easy snorkelling near Cairns, shallow enough for nervous swimmers, clear enough that I could see a reef shark cruising the sand channel from a good fifteen metres away. I drifted over coral gardens thick with clownfish and blue-spotted stingrays half-buried in sand, with the constant birdsong from the cay carrying strangely clearly across the water.

When to go: Visit October through March to see the seabird colony at its busiest with nesting and chick-rearing in full swing. For the calmest seas and clearest snorkelling water regardless of bird numbers, June through October remains the more reliable window.