Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.

I love this beautiful, laid-back tropical city.

It’s normally the dream destination for city folk from down south tired of the daily bump and grind.

However, over the past few years it’s steadily becoming synonymous, amongst the locals, with a different kind of visitor.

Often unseen and unheard of by the rest of Australia, Aboriginal itinerants have been sleeping rough in and around Cairns, making camps and finding shelter wherever they can.

Many come from further north, leaving their traditional homelands and remote communities for various reasons.

Only a 15 minute drive from the Esplanade is a world never glimpsed in the glossy tourism commercials.

Chinaman’s Creek is one of the larger squatters' camps, home to a number of Indigenous people sleeping rough.

Recently I sat down with one of them, Philamon (pictured). A proud Murri man originally from Cape York, alcohol has robbed him of almost everything.

He wanted to tell me his story. It was a heartbreakingly sad tale of a promising young man who had learnt his culture and traditions, a keen traveller who visited most of Australia and attended education courses in Darwin.

Then grog slowly ate its way through his ambitions. Philamon described it to me as cancer.

So now his home is on the outskirts of Cairns, underneath tarpaulins next to a creek, far way from his homeland.

I also met a number of incredible Murri outreach workers, whose work is their life, often working around the clock to ensure that mob sleeping rough are safe and, when possible, housed.

Watch the story this Sunday as I endeavour to find out why so many Aboriginal are homeless and explore what lead them to their current predicament.