This time last week, I was stepping off a Virgin Australia flight in Cairns, there was a fresh breeze in the air, the sky was blue and the sea even bluer, winter's the best time to be up in tropical north Queensland, I reckon.

Cairns today is a very different place to the one I first visited in the 90s. Then it had just woken up to tourism and I remember a very small town with a couple of main streets, and lots of Japanese tourists.

Fast forward to 2011 and the Japanese have been replaced by the Chinese. There weren't a lot of tourists around – traditional markets like the US and UK have declined, and Australians are spending their strong dollar overseas – but the ones I saw were mostly Chinese.

I ran into a group of youths at the Cairns Marina (pictured below). They were students in Sydney – two studying technology – and had just returned from a dive trip. "So beautiful, we saw many fish," one said.

Two had graduated and I asked if they would be returning to China. "We try and find a job here first," one replied. "I like it here. Fresh air, space, good life."

The other said, "In China, it's very stressful, we have to compete all the time. Here is more relaxing."

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