Gillies Range and Atherton Tablelands

A tropical mountain loop with a famous hairpin climb and highland waterfalls.

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Why this ride

A tropical mountain loop with a famous hairpin climb and highland waterfalls. The road: Gillies Highway and Kennedy Highway. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Cairns start

   Cairns sits in the tropical far north of Queensland, with the Coral Sea on one side and a wall of rainforest mountains on the other, and the whole town is organised around the idea of being a launch pad. Boats leave daily for the Great Barrier Reef, small planes head for Cape York, and the road north runs up to the Daintree, where the oldest rainforest on earth meets the beach. The town was founded in the 1870s as a port for the goldfields at Hodgkinson River and later became a sugar and tourism centre. It is not especially pretty in the old-town sense, but the Esplanade, with its saltwater lagoon, mudflats full of waders and cheerful backpackers, has a relaxed tropical air.

   The reason a rider starts here is the Tablelands. From Cairns you climb the Kuranda Range, or take the Gillies Highway, which twists up through some hundreds of bends in a few kilometres of forest, and then reach the cool, dairy-farm plateau around Atherton, with crater lakes, waterfalls and volcanic soil. It is tremendous motorcycle country, with smooth asphalt, good camber and generally respectful traffic, and the contrast between sweaty coast and cool upland is part of the pleasure. Look out for cassowaries on the roads in the rainforest, which are big, dangerous birds, and for tour buses on the narrow bends.

   The wet season, roughly December to April, brings humidity, cyclones and flooded roads, and the stingers, box jellyfish, make swimming in the sea inadvisable then. From May to October the weather is dry and mild, which is the ideal riding time. Mornings are the freshest and clearest, and the mountains can be shrouded in cloud by afternoon.

   Everything is easy in Cairns, from fuel stations to repair shops, hotels and restaurants. The pedestrian-friendly night markets and the Rusty's Markets in the daytime sell fruit like mangosteen, rambutan and custard apples, and there is good seafood, including barramundi and Moreton Bay bugs. Once you leave town the stations thin out in the hills, but Kuranda, Mareeba and Atherton all have fuel, so just keep an eye on the gauge. Pack a rain jacket whatever the forecast, and sunscreen for the lowlands.

2. Gordonvale stop

   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.

3. Atherton stop

   Atherton sits at about 760 metres on the Tableland behind Cairns, and the first thing you notice after the climb from the coast is the air. It is cooler, drier and smells of cut grass and woodsmoke instead of mangrove mud. The Tableland is a high plateau of old volcanic soil, rich enough that the area grows maize, peanuts, potatoes, bananas, coffee and tea, and the countryside looks more like a patch of rolling green dairy land than the tropical north. Cattle graze under big, spreading trees, and crater lakes fill the hollows left by ancient eruptions.

   The town itself is a working service centre of about seven and a half thousand people, with every kind of shop, fuel station and bakery you could want, so it is the sensible place to eat and fill the tank. It began as a timber and tin town in the late nineteenth century, and many Chinese workers stayed on to farm; the Hou Wang temple, a small wood-and-iron building lovingly preserved, is a reminder of that history and is worth a short visit. Tolga, a little way north, has a reputation for timber craft and woodworking, and Yungaburra, to the east, is a charming village with old pubs and a famous curtain fig tree nearby, its aerial roots hanging like a drape.

   The riding is the main draw. Roads on the Tableland roll across the plateau in gentle sweeps, then dive into rainforest where the temperature drops and the light turns green. The ride down the Gillies Range toward the coast is famous for its hundreds of corners, and the surface is generally good, though trucks and tourist traffic can slow progress. Watch for wet leaves and sudden showers, which are common in the wet season from December to March, when cloud sits low on the range.

   Wildlife is plentiful. Cassowaries, the huge flightless birds, live in the rainforest, and tree kangaroos hide in the canopy near the lakes, while platypus are sometimes seen at dusk in the creeks near Yungaburra. Come between May and October for the driest weather, and linger over a coffee made from local beans.

4. Kuranda stop

   Kuranda sits above the tropical lowlands of Far North Queensland, a village of about three thousand people in the rainforest on the Great Dividing Range, reached from Cairns by one of the most unusual commutes in Australia. The Kuranda Scenic Railway, built by hand in the 1880s and 1890s, climbs the range through fifteen tunnels and across high bridges, past the Barron Falls, and the Skyrail cableway glides above the canopy. By road, the Kuranda Range Road winds up through forest in steep bends.

   The village is a market town for visitors. The Original Rainforest Markets, which began in the 1970s, sell crafts, leather, jewellery and food, and the little streets are crowded with stalls and cafes. Behind this, the place has a quieter side, with walks in the forest, a butterfly sanctuary and a bird aviary. The Barron Gorge National Park, a section of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, protects some of the oldest rainforest on Earth, a living relic of the ancient forests that covered the continent when it was part of Gondwana.

   This is cassowary country. The cassowary, a large flightless bird with a blue neck and a helmet of bone, lives in the forests of the region, and warning signs show where they cross the road. They are rare, powerful and shy, and a close encounter is both thrilling and dangerous. Slow down in signed zones. Other wildlife includes tree kangaroos, spectacular butterflies and, at night, frogs and flying foxes.

   For a rider, the Kuranda Range Road is a good twisty climb, with tight corners, a steady gradient and dense forest on both sides. The humidity is high, the road surface can be wet or greasy, and sudden tropical downpours are common, especially in the wet season from about December to March, when the roads can also flood. The dry season, from May to October, is the best time, with warm days and cool nights.

   The village has basic services, including a petrol station, but Cairns has the widest choice, so fill up there before the climb. Behind Kuranda lies the Atherton Tableland, a cooler, greener upland of dairy farms, crater lakes and waterfalls, which makes for a lovely day's riding. The air smells of damp earth, flowers and woodsmoke, and the morning mist hangs in the trees.

5. Back to Cairns finish

Where this sits

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