The Best Rainforest Walks in Australia

Two World Heritage systems, one very old forest

Australia's rainforests are not one thing. They fall into two separate World Heritage listings with quite different characters, and knowing which you are walking into explains a lot about what you will see.

The Wet Tropics of Queensland, listed by UNESCO in 1988, covers around 8,944 square kilometres between Townsville and Cooktown, with the Daintree as its most famous section. This is tropical rainforest, and it is old — estimates put the Daintree at roughly 180 million years, making it the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforest on earth, tens of millions of years older than the Amazon. It was listed partly as a living record of the evolutionary history of land plants: of the world's small handful of the most primitive flowering plant families, a striking proportion occur here.

The biodiversity numbers are hard to take in. The Wet Tropics covers less than 0.2 per cent of Australia's land area and holds roughly 30 per cent of its frog species, around 40 per cent of its birds, over a third of its mammals and a majority of its butterflies. A single hectare can hold more tree species than the whole of the United Kingdom.

The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, spread across the New South Wales and Queensland border ranges and down the escarpment, are a different and cooler proposition — subtropical and temperate rainforest growing in the craters of ancient volcanoes. Lamington, Springbrook and Dorrigo all sit within it. This is the system on our doorstep, and it is the one most Brisbane visitors actually walk.

Further south again, Tasmania's takayna / Tarkine holds one of the largest tracts of cool temperate rainforest left in the world, and it feels nothing like either of the others — myrtle, sassafras, moss, and a silence that people find genuinely unsettling.

What a rainforest walk is actually like

The photographs undersell the humidity and oversell the visibility. A few honest expectations make the day considerably better.

• It will be wet, or recently wet. The Daintree receives around three metres of rain a year, mostly between December and April. Even in the dry season the tracks hold moisture and the air does not.
• The light is low. Canopy cover means it is dim at ground level even at midday, which is lovely to be in and difficult to photograph. Bring a phone or camera that handles low light, and do not rely on flash.
• Wildlife is heard more than seen. Rainforest animals are cryptic. You will hear whipbirds, catbirds and a great deal of insect noise; you will see far less. Move slowly and stop often — standing still for two minutes reveals more than walking for twenty.
• Footing is the main hazard. Wet rock, exposed roots, mud and boardwalk that turns slick. Proper shoes with grip, not sandals.
• It is cooler than the coast, particularly in the Gondwana forests at altitude. Lamington and Springbrook can be ten degrees below Brisbane.

What to bring

• Closed shoes with real grip, and socks you do not mind losing to mud
• A light rain layer, regardless of forecast
• Insect repellent, and long sleeves if you react badly to bites
• Water — more than you think, because humidity accelerates dehydration
• A head torch if a dusk or night walk is on the plan, which for platypus and glow-worms it should be
• A dry bag or ziplock for the phone

The things that bite, sting and stare

Australian rainforest has a reputation that outruns the reality, but three specific things are worth knowing about properly.

Leeches

Common in wet conditions in both the Wet Tropics and the Gondwana forests, and entirely harmless — unpleasant rather than dangerous. They find you at ankle height. Long socks tucked over trousers, repellent on socks and boots, and staying on the track help. If one attaches, do not burn it or pull it off; slide a fingernail under the mouthparts, or simply wait for it to drop. The wound bleeds for a while because of the anticoagulant, which is alarming and unimportant.

The stinging tree

The one to actually learn. Dendrocnide — the gympie-gympie or giant stinging tree — has large, heart-shaped, slightly furry leaves, and brushing against one delivers pain that can persist for weeks or months. It is common in disturbed edges and regrowth in the Wet Tropics and northern New South Wales. Learn the leaf shape at the trailhead sign, do not grab at vegetation for balance, and do not use unfamiliar leaves for any purpose.

Cassowaries

The southern cassowary is a large flightless bird of the Wet Tropics and, ecologically, one of the most important animals in the forest — it is the only species that disperses the seeds of many large-fruited rainforest trees. It is also capable of causing serious injury if it feels threatened or has been fed by people. The rules are firm: never feed one, never approach or corner one, do not run, and if a cassowary approaches, back away slowly and put a tree between you and it. Do not turn your back. Around Mission Beach and Cape Tribulation, drive slowly — vehicle strike is a leading cause of cassowary death.

Ticks, in the eastern forests, and mosquitoes everywhere, are the routine nuisances. Nothing on this list should keep you out of a rainforest; all of it is worth reading once.

Choosing a walk by what you can do

Rainforest is unusually good at accommodating everyone, because the boardwalk infrastructure at the major sites is excellent.

When to go

Tropical rainforest walks are most comfortable from May to September, when humidity drops and the tracks dry out. The wet season from December to April brings dramatic waterfalls and much heavier going, along with road closures on some access routes. The Gondwana forests of the Scenic Rim and northern New South Wales work year-round, with spring and autumn the sweet spot — though after heavy rain the falls are at their best, and so are the leeches.

For platypus at Eungella and glow-worms in the Gondwana forests, go at dawn or after dark respectively, and go quietly.

Walk the Scenic Rim with us

Cooee Tours has been operating out of Brisbane since 1974, and the Gondwana rainforests of the Scenic Rim are the closest thing we have to a home track. Lamington, Springbrook, Binna Burra and O'Reilly's are all within about two hours of the city, and between them they hold some of the most accessible ancient rainforest in the country — tree-top boardwalks, waterfall circuits, glow-worm gullies and Antarctic beech forest that predates the separation of Australia from Gondwana.

The access roads are narrow and winding, the trailhead car parks fill early, and the drive back after a long walk is the part nobody enjoys. We run charter and group day trips to the Scenic Rim, plus multi-day touring that pairs rainforest walking with the Gold Coast hinterland or the Granite Belt. Call 0409 661 342 or email contact@cooeetours.com.au.

Related reading: our guides to Australia's best national parks, the best waterfalls in Australia and Australian bush foods.

What you are actually looking at

Rainforest reads as undifferentiated green until someone points out the structure, at which point it becomes far more interesting. A few things to look for on any Australian rainforest walk.

• Buttress roots. The great flared bases on large rainforest trees are a response to shallow soil — there is very little depth to anchor into, so the tree spreads sideways instead. Nutrient in rainforest is mostly held in the living biomass, not the ground.
• Strangler figs. They germinate high in another tree's canopy, send roots down to the soil, and eventually envelop and kill the host. The hollow lattice left behind when the host rots is one of the great sights of the Gondwana forests.
• Antarctic beech. In Lamington and Springbrook, gnarled moss-covered Nothofagus that are direct descendants of Gondwanan forest and among the oldest living things in the country — some root systems are estimated in the thousands of years.
• Epiphytes. Elkhorns, staghorns, orchids and ferns growing on trunks and branches rather than in soil. The canopy is its own ecosystem with species that never touch the ground.
• Lianas and wait-a-while. The climbing lawyer cane, Calamus, has hooked tendrils that catch clothing and skin — hence the name. Do not pull against it; back up and unhook.
• Cauliflory. Flowers and fruit growing directly from trunks rather than branch tips, an adaptation to pollinators and dispersers that move through the understorey.

Rainforest wildlife worth going out of your way for

Rainforest animals are cryptic, but several are reliable if you go at the right time to the right place.

• Platypus at Eungella. Broken River in Eungella National Park, inland from Mackay, is among the most reliable places in Australia to see wild platypus. Dawn and dusk, from the viewing platforms, in silence.
• Glow-worms. Springbrook's Natural Bridge and several Gondwana gullies hold glow-worm colonies. Go after full dark, use no white light at all, and give your eyes fifteen minutes to adjust.
• Albert's lyrebird. Restricted to a small area of the border ranges around Lamington, and an extraordinary mimic. Winter is display season.
• Cassowary. Mission Beach and the Daintree, most often crossing roads early or late. Watch from the vehicle.
• Tree kangaroos. Lumholtz's on the Atherton Tableland, Bennett's in the Daintree. Genuinely difficult, and worth a guided spotlighting tour if you are serious.
• Pademelons. The small forest wallabies that appear on lawns and track edges at dusk across the Gondwana forests, and the easiest rainforest mammal to see.

The general rule holds everywhere: go at dawn or dusk, move slowly, stop often, and stay quiet. A guided spotlighting walk is the single best way to see rainforest mammals, because someone who knows where to point the torch changes the odds entirely.

Why these forests still exist

Rainforest once covered a great deal of the Australian continent. What survives today is remnant — pockets that held on through tens of millions of years of drying, and then through a century and a half of logging that came close to finishing several of them.

The Wet Tropics were logged commercially until the mid-1980s, and World Heritage listing in 1988 was fiercely contested at the time. The Gondwana Rainforests were similarly fought over. takayna / Tarkine remains contested now. Almost every walk on this list exists because somebody argued for it, frequently against the economics of the day.

That history is visible on the ground if you look. Regrowth stands of even-aged trees mark old logging coupes. Overgrown snig tracks run through several of the Gondwana forests. And the enormous individual trees that survive — the bull kauris, the red cedars that escaped the axe — are often the ones the walk is routed to reach.

The current pressures are different but not smaller: climate shift moving the cloud layer that mountaintop rainforest depends on, myrtle rust, feral pigs, and the 2019–20 fires, which burned into rainforest that had not carried fire in living memory. Lamington and Springbrook both took damage, and recovery is visible along several of the tracks.

It is worth knowing while you are walking. These are not simply pretty places; they are survivors, and their continued existence is not a settled question.

Frequently asked questions