Airlie Beach is often the first stop for visitors to the Whitsundays and is an ideal location to base yourself for a host of day trips covering the area. To start with, there's scuba diving the outer reef, coral viewing, fishing, rainforest walks, a visit to a wildlife park or scenic flights.

The magnificence of the reef in the East is set against the sheer beauty and tranquillity of the rainforests in the West. The Whitsundays is home to one of the worlds oldest continually surviving rainforests. The Conway and Dryander National Parks along with the State forests provide shelter to some of Australia's unique flora and fauna, including the Proserpine Rock Wallaby, ferns, orchids and enormous hardwoods.

Walking tracks lead into the heart of the forests, which enable you to marvel at the massive strangler figs, stands of red and white cedars and the exotic wild orchids hanging in clusters from ancient trees.

Dry vine thicket, mangroves, open forests with a grasstree understorey, paperbark and pandanus woodlands, and patches of lowland rainforest with twisted vines grow in the park. The park is home to two of Australia's mound-building birds, the Australian brush-turkey and the orange-footed scrubfowl.