Decide when you want to leave the island, then choose the company. Three operators run from the Cairns marina to Fitzroy Island, each in about 45 minutes, and what really separates them is not the fare but the hour of the last boat home: half past three, four o'clock or five.
Read on 25 September 2026 from each operator's own website and booking system: Fitzroy Flyer times confirmed as bookable every day of October 2026; Fitzroy Island Adventures and Sunlover times as published on 25 September 2026 Fitzroy Island Resort – Getting to Fitzroy Island and Fitzroy Flyer timetable · 2026-09-25
Work backwards from the return. The Fitzroy Flyer, run by Fitzroy Island Resort, leaves the island at 09:30, 12:15 and 17:00. Fitzroy Island Adventures, part of the Reef Unlimited group, comes back at 14:00 and 16:00. Sunlover Reef Cruises sends two boats out in the morning and brings everybody home on one, at 15:30. Choose the return that suits the rest of your day in Cairns and the morning departure more or less picks itself.
Price barely separates them. An adult return costs $105 on the Flyer's full-day ticket, $108 with Fitzroy Island Adventures and $109 with Sunlover, while the Flyer's half-day returns, 08:00 out with 12:15 back or 13:30 out with 17:00 back, come down to $99. Children are where the gap opens: $55, $62 and $63 respectively, under three different definitions of a child.
Fitzroy is a national park island managed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, with a resort, a bar and a turtle rehabilitation centre inside it and rainforest tracks climbing behind the beach. There is no vehicle access on or around it. Whatever you take has to come off the boat in your hands, which is why the luggage rules further down matter more here than on a day out to a sand cay.
Check the age bands before the dollar figures, because the three companies do not agree on when a child stops being a child. The Flyer charges the adult fare from 14; Fitzroy Island Adventures and Sunlover keep the child fare until 15. All three let infants aged up to three go free, and Fitzroy Island Adventures wants them on the booking even so.
Every fare below is a return trip with nothing else attached. Sunlover is the only one of the three that also publishes a one-way price, and the only one that states its Fitzroy fares carry no fuel surcharge.
| Full day, adult 14+ | $ 105 |
| Full day, child 4–13 | $ 55 |
| Half day, adult 14+ | $ 99 |
| Infant 0–3 | Free |
| Adult 16+ | $ 108 |
| Child 4–15 | $ 62 |
| Infant 0–3, pre-booked | Free |
| Return, adult | $ 109 |
| Return, child 4–15 | $ 63 |
| Return, family of 2 adults and 2 children | $ 281 |
| One way, adult | $ 56.50 |
| One way, child | $ 32.50 |
Sunlover prices valid for travel 1 April 2026 – 31 March 2027; Fitzroy Island Adventures prices valid to 31 March 2027; Fitzroy Flyer fares as shown in the resort's booking system for October 2026. All read on 25 September 2026 Sunlover Reef Cruises – Reef tour prices (Fitzroy Island packages and ferry) · 2026-09-25
Queensland Parks puts Fitzroy Island 25 kilometres east of Cairns, and all three operators quote about 45 minutes for the run. Sunlover calls it an ancient granite continental island: a piece of the mainland that the sea cut off, not a reef cay built from coral, which is why it rises steeply into rainforest with a summit track and a lighthouse walk. On the map you can see the whole trip at once, a straight line from the city waterfront to the jetty at Welcome Bay with nothing between them but the water.
One marina, three reporting points. Sunlover issues boarding passes at its reservations desk inside the Reef Fleet Terminal, and that desk closes 15 minutes before the early boat and 30 minutes before the standard one. The Flyer skips the terminal: walk to Berth 20 on the Marlin Marina Wharf, at least 30 minutes before departure, and give your booking name or QR code to the crew. Fitzroy Island Adventures boards at its own vessel on Finger A and sends a marina map by SMS and email the afternoon before you travel.
If you are driving in, Fitzroy Island Resort points day visitors to the council car parks outside The Pier, to undercover parking at The Pier or the casino, and to all-day outdoor parking by Trinity Wharf, roughly two blocks along Wharf Street. Overnight guests with a car are steered towards the undercover options.
All three companies land at the same jetty in Welcome Bay, where the fringing reef starts a few metres off the sand. Getting back on is where they differ: the Flyer wants you at the jetty at least 15 minutes before your sailing, and its booking pages say 20 for the 17:00; Fitzroy Island Adventures tells its full-day passengers to head for the wharf at 15:45 for the 16:00; Sunlover starts boarding its single return at 15:15.
Fitzroy Island Resort will not carry anyone under 18 on the Flyer unless an adult is travelling with them. Fitzroy Island Adventures draws the same line at 16. Teenagers heading over on their own need to pick the boat accordingly.
The resort's booking terms rule out luggage of 20 kg or more, eskies and cooler boxes, beach trolleys, stand-up paddleboards and kayaks. Standard travel bags are fine; anything bulky has to stay in Cairns.
In the two wettest months the Flyer's 11:00 from Cairns and 12:15 from the island do not run from Monday to Thursday. On those days it is 08:00 or 13:30 out and 09:30 or 17:00 back.
Queensland Parks does not allow domestic animals in Fitzroy Island National Park or on the tidal land around it, and it counts beaches, rocks and mangroves as tidal land.
Fitzroy Island Adventures describes its vessels as pram friendly and Sunlover's crew help with prams at the gangway. On land it is harder: Queensland Parks lists no wheelchair-accessible facilities or tracks in the national park, and the walk to Nudey Beach is steep and rocky.
Queensland Parks' advice is to confirm your transfer 24 hours before departure because weather affects the boats. Fitzroy Island Adventures reckons 15 knots or less is generally smooth and 20 knots and over gets bumpy.
The government's own advice for this crossing fits in three lines: about 45 minutes on the water, ferries affected by the weather, and a recommendation to confirm your transfer 24 hours before you go. It is sound advice on a route where each company runs its own boat to its own clock. If the wind takes out one sailing, the next boat to leave may belong to somebody else, and nothing in the three timetables is coordinated. The Fitzroy Island Adventures fare also carries one item the other two do not itemise: a $5 levy per person, which the company says recovers the Fitzroy Island facilities licence fees and its administration costs. It is already inside the $108.
From Cairns, Fitzroy is the island to pick when you want a climb and rainforest as well as the water. The Green Island boats cross to a low coral cay instead, and further down the coast the Whitsunday transfers, such as the Port of Airlie run to Daydream, run to a resort's timetable rather than a day-tripper's. Fitzroy sits between the two: a resort island that day visitors can reach on any of three boats.
The Fitzroy Flyer. Its last departure leaves the island at 17:00. Fitzroy Island Adventures' full-day boat leaves at 16:00, and Sunlover brings all of its passengers back on a single boat at 15:30, arriving at the Cairns marina at about 16:30.
The Flyer leaves Cairns at 08:00, Fitzroy Island Adventures at 08:30 and Sunlover's early boat at 08:45. Allow about 45 minutes on the water, so the first two put you on the jetty at around a quarter to nine and a quarter past nine, and Sunlover's lands at 09:30.
Sunlover sells one-way transfers, $56.50 for an adult and $32.50 for a child, so two singles on different days work. Fitzroy Island Resort books Flyer transfers for its overnight guests with a promo code from the accommodation confirmation. Fitzroy Island Adventures sells same-day full and half days.
No. A child return is $55 on the Flyer's full day, $62 with Fitzroy Island Adventures and $63 with Sunlover. The Flyer also moves teenagers onto the adult fare at 14, while the other two keep the child price up to 15. Babies up to three years old ride free on all three.
The company says it recovers the Fitzroy Island facilities licence fees plus its own administration costs and charges. It is included in the $108 adult and $62 child prices rather than added at the end.
Not one you can book at the moment. The resort's booking system lists evening Flyer day trips returning at 20:30, but it showed no available dates for them when we checked the whole of October 2026. The 17:00 is the last sailing currently on sale.
No. Queensland Parks does not permit domestic animals in Fitzroy Island National Park or on the tidal land around it, and the beaches count as tidal land.
Not quite. In February and March its 11:00 from Cairns and 12:15 from the island do not run on Mondays to Thursdays, which leaves 09:30 and 17:00 as the only ways back on those days.