The vast distances involved in travel in Australia mean we often must opt for beach over countryside or bush over surf when choosing a holiday.

But what if you could visit three iconic Australian landscapes in a mere six days?

Luxury Lodges of Australia have come up with a series of 19 itineraries that combine two or more of their 20 lodges, making it possible for guests to experience more of the country in one trip.

And what an amazing country it is.

I’m onboard for one of the new itineraries, known as the Far North Queensland Trifecta, which combines stays at Silky Oaks Lodge, Mount Mulligan Lodge and Lizard Island. That’s the Daintree rainforest, outback Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef in one hit, connected by short flights and helicopter rides.

This itinerary starts in Cairns, where our small group is collected by air-conditioned van and driven past cane fields and shaded beaches to Silky Oaks Lodge, which sits on the Mossman River in the middle of one the world’s most ancient rainforests.

It’s the end of the wet season, and it’s still raining in heavy bursts, but that somehow makes being here even more special.

It’s a jungle out there and the lodge’s open-sided design in the main building and in the treehouse-style rooms immerses guests in the forest with the rapidly moving river whooshing by below. The heavy rain all night is more soothing than the green noise on a sleep app.

The rooms are little cottages featuring two decks, one with a hammock strung from corner to corner, the other with an open-air round stone bath. My River House is cool and super luxurious inside, but it’s nice even in the humidity (and mozzie attacks) to leave all the doors open. I’m thankful we don’t have native monkeys in Australia.

When I step outside, everything is teeming with life. The majestic 180-million-year-old forest, under the custodianship of the Kuku Yulanji people, contains 18 per cent of the bird species found in Australia, 30 per cent of our frog, reptile and marsupial species, and 65 per cent of our bat and butterfly species.

Everything here is a celebration of the rainforest. There are walking trails throughout the property, taking you deeper into the jungle. (Lots of vines, prehistoric ferns and muddy paths.) Yoga is held each morning in a pavilion overlooking the river. Sundowners can be enjoyed on a sandy riverside beach or up in The Jungle Perch, a covered platform with an open bar.

Meals are served in the open-sided restaurant with cool fans circulating overhead. The chefs use local produce as much as possible, including plants, such as betel leaf, from the kitchen garden.

While there are many excursions beyond the lodge, including a guided cultural walk at Mossman Gorge, or sailing and snorkelling trips on the reef, I opt to spend my two days tucked away in the lush greenery, swimming in the lagoon-like pool, walking the damp trails and getting even more sticky with a massage in the aptly named Falling Waters Spa.

It’s only 30 minutes by helicopter to our next destination, Mount Mulligan Lodge, across the range in cattle territory. Unfortunately, it’s too stormy for the chopper, so we head back to Cairns and then take a Cessna ride through the clouds towards the north-west.

Mount Mulligan features an awe-inspiring 18-kilometre escarpment that’s 400 metres high, a spectacular wall of red sandstone that frames the lodge’s lily-covered weir and lawns. It’s five times larger than Uluru. The traditional owners, the Djungan people, believe the mountain is the sacred birthplace of the Rainbow Serpent.

With its blue shadows and white-trunk gums, the view of the landscape from my suite looks like an Albert Namatjira painting.

The lodge is a vibrant green oasis at the end of the wet season. It will be dustier once the dry settles in, making it look more like Akubra and RM Williams country. The pastoral lease includes 2000 Brahmin cattle on 28 hectares.

While the lodge is separated from the cattle property, there are herds of amiable cattle on the roads when we venture out and bands of beautiful wild brumbies running through the bush. The cattle are there for breeding purposes only, which may be why they look so relaxed.

The lodge accommodates 28 guests in 14 elegant suites, all with wide verandahs facing the escarpment and weir. On each verandah there’s a daybed and a curved, corrugated iron bathtub, which is far more comfortable than it looks. There’s good Wi-Fi but no phone reception or TV, which is a blessing, as the bird calls are symphonic.

Each suite has its own gold electric golf cart, which is handy for driving uphill to the corrugated iron shed where guests gather for sundowners each night. The resort by necessity mostly runs on solar, with strict sustainability practices that don’t impinge on the luxury. The main pavilion is constructed with ironbark timber salvaged from Pyrmont Bay Wharf in Sydney.

Fine dining (occasionally under a blanket of stars) is part of the experience. There’s a nose-to-tail philosophy in the kitchen, with butchery done in-house, and produce comes from the rich nearby Atherton Tablelands and seafood from the coast and river.

Guests can go “barrayaking” on the weir (taking a kayak to catch barramundi), drive ATVs through the bush, or follow signposted trails to hike around the property.

Beyond the lodge’s gates, the bush is rich with remnants from the history of mining in the region. In safari trucks we drive out one day with guide Nieve to visit the abandoned Tyrconnel gold mine in what was once the town of Thornborough. Established briefly during the gold rush of 1876-77, Thornborough once had 22 pubs. Now there’s only one resident left.

Mount Mulligan itself was a prosperous coal mining town in 1910 but an inestimable tragedy, an underground explosion at the mine in 1921, killed 75 of the town’s workers, including children. It’s now a ghost town with a single chimney stack and some vegetation-covered ruins. The old hospital houses the lodge’s staff.

Only when we depart from a paddock and fly over the escarpment en route to Lizard Island does the vastness of the territory really strike home. Our single-engine jet flies into a storm, and we’re thrust into another kind of landscape altogether – a skyscape of turbulent clouds in shades of grey and black.

Landing on Lizard Island an hour later is a relief. The clouds have departed and the waters around the Great Barrier Reef are clearest azure. Captain Cook passed by in 1770 and gave the island its name, but the local Guugu Yimithirr people thought it looked like a stingray. It does from the air.

Apart from the island staff greeting us with a White Lotus wave, there are, unsurprisingly, 11 species of lizards on the island, as well as flying foxes and 40 species of birds, including pretty yellow-bellied sunbirds and sea eagles.

Lizard island was designated a national park in 1939. The resort, established 50 years ago, sits on the north-western side, on a long sandy strip of Anchor Bay, one of several white beaches etched into the coves of the island.

There’s a beach club for water sports, a small spa with pool, and a breezy pavilion holding the Relais & Chateaux-listed Salt Water Restaurant and Driftwood Bar. At one end of the beach sits the famous Marlin Bar, the only public bar on the island. At the other end, high on a promontory, sits The House, a multi-room villa favoured by celebrities such as Katy Perry and Bill Gates.

I’m in a Beachfront Suite which, as the name suggests, is a few steps across a lawn from the sand. It’s a spacious, cool beach house in white and stone colours in chic Aussie style. A substantial verandah has a daybed and dining table positioned to frame the water and palm trees.

We’re 40 kilometres from the Queensland coast here, and it’s prime diving and snorkelling territory in the coral gardens below. There are about 4000 individual reefs on the Great Barrier Reef and 15 of them lie just off Lizard Island.

David Attenborough has said this is one of his favourite places on the planet, and you can see why. The Reef has amazing biodiversity and beauty including approximately 1600 species of fish, more than 350 types of hard corals and 4000 mollusc species. Giant clams and Green Sea turtles are found in the waters around the island.

On a sunset cruise one evening, a large tawny nurse shark circles the back of the boat. They don’t bite, apparently. No one wants to jump in and test this.

But it seems our last iconic landscape on the trifecta is the one most threatened. Regular bleaching incidents and major outbreaks of the venomous Crown of Thorns starfish are decimating the corals.

The Australian Museum founded its Lizard Island Research Station in 1973, and it has hosted thousands of international scientists and researchers over the years, who work in laboratories on the facility.

Guests can visit the centre, which lies along a rough track a 10-minute drive from the resort reception. A maximum of 35 scientists are there at any one time, doing groundbreaking work such as the selective breeding of corals to resist the warmth of climate-change affected waters.

Co-directors Dr Emily Howells and Dr David Abrego are custodians of the reef and on hand to explain their work to guests. Howells admits she often rides the wave of despair about the health of the reef.

“If we don’t get our act together, we’ll see more natural disasters,” Abrego warns. “But we said that about the ozone layer and we got results. It’s about the will of the people making decisions.”

But, in good news for everyone, including snorkelling guests, “there is still lots of beautiful reef around”, Howells says.

The details

Stay
For information on the North Queensland Trifecta, a suggested three nights at each of the three lodges. See luxurylodgesofaustralia.com.au

Silky Oaks Lodge from $1400 a night per suite; Mount Mulligan Lodge from $1795 a night per suite; and Lizard Island from $2516 a night. Plus transfers.

The writer was a guest of Luxury Lodges of Australia and Tourism Events Queensland.