Cairns Airport
Cairns Airport is an international airport in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Formerly operated by the Cairns Port Authority, the airport was sold by the Queensland Government in December 2008 to a private consortium. It is the seventh busiest airport in Australia. The airport is located north northwest of Cairns or north of the Cairns central business district, in the suburb of Aeroglen. The airport lies between Mount Whitfield to the west and Trinity Bay to the east.
History of Cairns
Around the same time, another group led by prospector William "Bill" Smith travelling from the Hodgkinson goldfields, cut an alternate route to the coast at Trinity Inlet. This was called "Smith's Track" and the place on the inlet where it finished was called Smith's Landing. Closer investigation by several official expeditions to Trinity Inlet established its potential for development into a port. Brinsley G. Sheridan, a police magistrate from Cardwell, surveyed the area around Smith's Landing and planned a settlement which he called Thornton. However, the coastal site of Battle Camp where the more direct "Douglas Track" finished became the preferable place of settlement. 
The first government officials arrived by boat and pitched their tents opposite the site of the present-day Pacific International hotel. On 7 October 1876, the Governor of Queensland, William Wellington Cairns, proclaimed the new northern port at Trinity Bay which was named Cairns in his honour. On 1 November 1876, the township was inaugurated at a luncheon given by Captain T. A. Lake on board the Government ship, SS "Victoria". This is regarded as the official birth date of Cairns. The first public land sales in February 1877 were supplemented, three months later, by the construction of the first local saw mill making use of the abundant natural timber resources.
The Smith's Landing-Thornton area later became part of the Cairns suburb of Portsmith