North of Lizard, Australia's Great Barrier Reef is more convoluted and closer to the shore than south of the island. The northern part of the reef has no resort islands though. Between Lizard Island and Thursday Island in the Torres Strait there are no hotels or restaurants on the reef at all.

There are islands between Lizard and Thursday, but they are windswept and barren and not as attractive as those further south. Safe anchorages are hard to find in the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef and it depends very much of the weather if you can visit the islands or not on any given day. The region is always busy with cruising yachts, prawn trawlers, container ships and bulk carriers though and two cruise ships operate regular return trips from Cairns to Thursday Island. They make stops at a number of islands along the way.

The Howick group of islands boasts mangrove-filled reef flats and low-lying landforms. The islands are some 50 km northwest of Lizard. On the way to the wildlife magnet of Raine Island, you will pass the Flinders group, Morris Islet sand cay and Night Island. Despite its small size (Raine is less than 1 km long and less than half a km wide) and its complete lack of trees, the island attracts huge populations of birds and turtles. It is a major breeding ground for the green turtle and in some years the animals arrive in numbers up to 100,000.