These northern Australian cities have it all for a warm winter getaway

Both offer outdoor adventures, wild Aussie beauty and urban comforts, too - but for a warm winter getaway, which one would you choose? Our duelling experts help you decide.

By Mal Chenu

Broome and Cairns both have international airports, tropical weather and greenery, and boast the full range of the critters that scare the bejesus out of overseas tourists - saltwater crocodiles, Irukandji jellyfish (and less lethal stingers), spiders, snakes, goannas and coffee prices. Plus bunyips, drop bears and hoop snakes, if you're talking to MAGAs.

But Cairns, rather than being a stellar destination, is actually just a gateway to places you really want to visit. The Great Barrier Reef is at least an hour away, and the Daintree is even further. Calling Cairns a "destination" is like heading to Penrith so you can visit the Sydney Opera House.

Broome is also a gateway - to the vast, incomparable Kimberley region - but in the town itself, you are never far from your next attraction, adventure or camel. Incorporating all three, the evening dromedary jaunt on Cable Beach is a Kimberley classic. As the twilight skies tint to harmonise with the intense ochres, the dying sun throws the long shadows of your camel conga line onto the shore, setting the scene for the archetypal Aussie sunset selfie. It's up to you if you want to twist your beach towel into a keffiyeh, hum the theme from Lawrence of Arabia and scream "NO PRISONERS!" but don't be surprised if your camel turns around and bites you on the Aqaba.

For two or three days a month between March and October, you (and your camel, if you've made up and decided to kick on together) can enjoy a unique celestial spectacle when the rising full moon reflects on exposed, low-tide mudflats. This artistic collaboration produces the Staircase to the Moon, an ethereal illusion that draws thousands of viewers and their cameras to the Mangrove Hotel, Town Beach and other venues.

The distinctive colours of the Pindan country of the Kimberley are even more dramatically displayed at Gantheaume Point, at the southern end of Cable Beach. Here, the sea is impossibly turquoise, the sand an implausible white and the rocky cliffs a far-fetched red.

Interpretive signs describe the Point's history, including the Indigenous Yawuru people, the lighthouse, Anastasia's Pool (built by an early lighthouse keeper for his arthritic wife), and 125-million-year-old dinosaur footprints preserved in reef rock. Gantheaume Point is also a departure point for kayak tours, fishing charters and whale watching tours.

Broome's colourful medley reaches out into the nearby creeks, mangroves and mudflats of Roebuck Bay, where millions of migrating shorebirds enjoy a stopover on their flights to Asian breeding grounds. Add in the cultural potpourri of Chinatown, stargazing, mud crab feasts, shucking awesome pearl heritage, farms and shopping, and you can see that Broome sweeps all before it in this battle.

By Amy Cooper

I'm not about to give Broome the brush-off, because Mal and his camels might get the hump. Besides, it's beautiful. Few places on earth can match this sunburnt country's northern regions for wild, vast magnificence. Cairns and Broome lie about 3700 kilometres apart on opposite northern coasts. Both nestle among natural wonders, but the Far North Queensland capital neighbours two of the most wondrous of all: the world's largest living organism and the planet's oldest tropical rainforest.

On the ocean side: the Great Barrier Reef, a mesmerising marine universe where 3000 individual reef systems nurture nations of saltwater celebrities. On land, the 180-millon-year-old Daintree Rainforest, the world's most ancient and biodiverse tropical rainforest - senior to the Amazon by 10 million years and teeming with life found nowhere else: some 663 animal species and 2800 types of plants. A spectacle so jaw-dropping that Sir David Attenborough, chief spokesman for Mother Nature, calls it "the most extraordinary place on earth".

Cairns offers endless access to these legendary landscapes, via snorkelling, sailing, kayaking, or sleeping with the fishes on a moored outer reef pontoon to forest river rafting, croc and platypus spotting, hunting mud crabs with a Kuku Yalanji guide or Indigenous-inspired treatments at the Daintree Wellness Spa.

Stars among the fiesta of fantastical fauna include the southern cassowary, a blue-faced, dinosaur-vibing bird taller than most blokes, and Wally, a two-metre, sapphire-hued Maori wrasse with Mick Jagger's pout. These psychedelic species might easily be mistaken for the side effects of one too many Maui Wowie Fishbowls (also big and blue) at Flamingos Tiki Bar. Which brings me to the crucial third "R" in the winning Cairns trifecta: reef, rainforest - and revelry. Cairns isn't just a portal. It's a party, unfolding 24/7 along the waterfront Esplanade, around the marina, in the laneways and on golden sands. Good times roll in swim-up bars, rooftop bars, hotel bars, barefoot bars, backpacker bars, nightclubs, breweries, tavernas, trattorias - with hedonism in every hue, from $4 shots and twerk-off contests to sunset toasts with vintage Krug.

If adrenaline's your poison, Queensland's adventure capital can hook you up with no end of options for plummeting, spinning and bouncing all over its natural assets. Cairns has Australia's only bungy jump, and in one afternoon I hurled myself off its 50-metre platform, and then jumped from the world's smallest (named in the Guinness World Records), a four-metre drop at Gilligan's nightclub. That's Cairns: as extreme as you'd expect from a place that's the filling in Australia's most spectacular geographical sandwich.

Mal might bristle, but his Broome schtick isn't quite enough. I'm crowning Cairns queen of the north.