The site of my funniest (also most frustrating) run in with immigration officials.
When I was still a university student, one of my relatives in the UK passed away. I flew over for the funeral with my mum, though we both ended up on separate flights because we booked on such short notice and everything was full. I never gave it a second thought. Returning back to Australia we both landed at Cairns airport within about half an hour of each other. Sheer coincidence. Problem is, I have an Australian passport and mum doesn’t. Chaos ensued when I got hauled up by immigration officials, yeah, me, the one on the Australian passport got hauled up. Got the whole “are you travelling with anybody?” speech. I said no, since mum and I were on separate flights. Mum said yes because by pure chance we’d run into each other at the immigration counters. Not to mention I’d written on my arrival card that I was a student. Why lie? I was a student! But then I get “how can you afford to fly to the UK for only 5 days in the middle of semester if you’re a university student? What were you doing there?“ I know they’re just doing their job and all, but honestly. If I were trying to smuggle drugs or something, I would have come up with something much more original. How do they know I don’t have rich parents to pay for this stuff? And imagine my joy at having to drag up the fact I was there for a funeral of a family member.
It’s a very small terminal. Shopping is limited to a duty free store that sells alcohol, cigarettes and beauty stuff. Electronics type gear was practically non-existant. There was a single food outlet. And there was a tacky souveneir type store. If you want duty free stuff and you’ve been in Cairns/North Queensland, buy it in town. There are 50 million duty free shops in Cairns city that sell all your usual luxury goods/watches/jewellery. Just claim the tax refund on the way out at the airport 
Cairns airport is also relatively close to the city. I’ve never had to catch a taxi out there myself, but I expect it wouldn’t cost much more than $20-25 or so to get a taxi from town. And the domestic terminal is literally right next door. It’s about a 5 minute walk from door to door.
Quarantine at Cairns is a bitch though because it is dominanted by tourists and not business people. You get all these Asian tourists trying to take samples of coral and fruit whatnot in and out of the country. Holds everyone up all the time. I know they’re just doing their job and that it’s better to be safe than sorry, but it’s incredibly frustrating when you don’t have anything to declare and you just want to get out of there.
It’s my understanding that there is a Qantas lounge at the international terminal. I’ve never used it though, so I can’t really comment. If it’s anything like the one at Cairns domestic terminal though, it’s probably quite small with minimal facilities since most business people fly international through Brisbane and not Cairns.
I don’t hate the airport because of all of that, but it’s certainly not one of my preferred transit points. It’s too small and it’s boring. If you’re only there for an hour, it’s probably fine. But when you’re transiting and have a long layover, it sucks.
