Gordonvale lies at the foot of the mountains south of Cairns, in a flat, green valley of sugar cane, and above it rises a peculiar peak. Walsh's Pyramid, a steep-sided, conical mountain of about 920 meters, is claimed to be the highest free-standing pyramid-shaped mountain in the world, and every year runners race to its summit in a local event. The mountain makes a dramatic backdrop to a town that is otherwise a modest working place, with a sugar mill that sends up steam, cane trains and old timber houses.
The town has a place in the history of an unfortunate animal. In 1935, a batch of cane toads, imported from Hawaii to eat the beetles that damaged the cane, was released at Gordonvale, and the toads multiplied beyond all control, spreading across northern Australia. A cane toad statue in town marks the spot, a wry monument to ecological error. The Mulgrave River runs through the valley, and the green hills behind hold rainforest.
For motorcyclists, Gordonvale is the base of the Gillies Range Road, the Gillies Highway, which climbs to the Atherton Tablelands in about nineteen kilometers, with some two hundred and sixty tight bends, hairpins and steep grades. It is among the best known twisty roads in Queensland, winding through dense rainforest, with tree ferns, vines and glimpses of the coastal plain far below. At the top, the Tablelands offer a different world, cooler and drier, with lakes, farms, waterfalls and the village of Yungaburra, where you may see platypus in the creek at dusk.
Gordonvale has fuel, a supermarket and cafes, and Cairns, about twenty-five kilometers north, has everything. Fill up before climbing, as the range has no services. The best months are May to October, the dry season, with warm, sunny days, while the wet season, from December to March, brings heavy rain, landslips and occasional cyclones that can close the road. Trucks use the range road, so take care on blind corners, and watch for cassowaries, large flightless birds that sometimes cross the road in the rainforest.