Best rainforest walks in Australia through ancient, dripping forest

Most people picture red dirt and dry heat when they think of Australia, which makes the rainforest walks here a genuine surprise. Some of these forests are older than the flowering plants that grow in most of the rest of the world, and walking through them feels closer to stepping onto a different planet than a different state.

The Daintree in Far North Queensland gets most of the attention, and rightly so, but Australia’s rainforest stretches from steamy tropical canopy in the north down to cool, mossy temperate forest in Tasmania. Each type has its own walks, its own sounds and its own reasons to visit.

Below is a working list, grouped by region, along with what to actually expect underfoot — because “rainforest” in Cairns and “rainforest” in Tasmania are almost different words.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• 🌴 Best overall: The Daintree Rainforest, the oldest tropical rainforest on Earth.
• 🦘 Best for wildlife: Mossman Gorge, with strong odds of spotting cassowaries.
• 🌫️ Best cool-climate rainforest: Tarra-Bulga National Park, Victoria.
• 🍃 Best short walk: Curtain Fig Tree circuit, Atherton Tablelands.
• 🥾 Best multi-day walk: Overland Track through Tasmania’s temperate rainforest.
• 🌧️ Pack for rain: Rainforest means rain, regardless of the season.
• 👟 Wear grip: Boardwalks and roots get slippery even on dry days.

🌴 The Daintree and Far North Queensland

This is the big one — over 180 million years old, and the only place on Earth where two World Heritage sites, the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, sit directly next to each other.

1. Mossman Gorge circuit. A well-maintained boardwalk loop through ancient forest along a crystal-clear granite gorge, with strong odds of spotting a cassowary if you are quiet.
2. Marrdja Boardwalk, Cape Tribulation. A short, flat walk through mangroves and lowland rainforest, ending near the beach.
3. Dubuji Boardwalk, Cape Tribulation. Another easy loop, good for spotting birdlife in the early morning.
4. Jindalba Boardwalk. A quieter alternative near Cape Tribulation, often with fewer visitors than the more famous walks nearby.
5. Cape Tribulation to Emmagen Creek. A longer, less developed track for travellers wanting to get further from the boardwalks and crowds.

👉 Book a Daintree Rainforest and Mossman Gorge Tour on GetYourGuide →

🍃 The Atherton Tablelands

Inland and up in altitude from Cairns, the Tablelands trade tropical heat for cooler, volcanic-soil rainforest and some genuinely strange trees.

1. Curtain Fig Tree circuit. A short boardwalk loop around one of the most striking fig trees in the country, with curtain-like aerial roots dropping over 15 metres.
2. Cathedral Fig Tree walk. Similar in style to the Curtain Fig but even larger, tucked further off the main tourist route.
3. Crater Lakes National Park. Two volcanic crater lakes, Eacham and Barrine, both ringed by rainforest walking circuits.
4. Wooroonooran National Park. Home to Queensland’s two highest peaks, with rainforest trails ranging from easy strolls to serious summit hikes.
5. Millaa Millaa Falls circuit. Combines rainforest walking with a cluster of waterfalls, one of the most photographed spots on the Tablelands.

🎯 Best time to visit tropical rainforest

The dry season, roughly May to October, is the easiest time to walk these tracks — lower humidity, fewer leeches and less chance of track closures. That said, the wet season brings the forest fully to life, with waterfalls at their most dramatic, if you do not mind getting wet yourself.

🌲 New South Wales rainforest walks

Subtropical rainforest pockets survive along the state’s northern border, remnants of a much larger forest that once stretched across the continent.

1. Minyon Falls walk, Nightcap National Park. A loop through subtropical rainforest ending at a 100-metre waterfall, inland from Byron Bay.
2. Antarctic Beech walk, Border Ranges. Ancient beech trees dating back to when Australia was still joined to Antarctica, found at higher altitude in the Border Ranges.
3. Dorrigo Rainforest boardwalk. A wheelchair-accessible skywalk through the rainforest canopy, ending at a lookout over the Bellinger Valley.
4. Booyong Loop, Nightcap National Park. A shorter, quieter alternative in the same World Heritage-listed area.

🌫️ Cool temperate rainforest in the south

Further south, rainforest changes character entirely — cool, mossy, and dominated by ferns and beech rather than palms and figs.

1. Tarra-Bulga National Park, Victoria. Cool temperate rainforest with a suspension bridge walk through the canopy, in Gippsland’s ranges.
2. Otway Fly Treetop Walk, Great Ocean Road. An elevated steel walkway through ancient myrtle beech and mountain ash forest.
3. Russell Falls circuit, Mount Field National Park, Tasmania. An easy, family-friendly walk through tall eucalypt and fern forest to a tiered waterfall.
4. Overland Track sections, Tasmania. Parts of this famous multi-day trek pass through dense, ancient temperate rainforest around Cradle Mountain.
5. Franklin River Nature Trail, Tasmania. A short loop through cool rainforest along one of Tasmania’s most iconic wild rivers.

👉 Book a Great Ocean Road and Otway Rainforest Tour on GetYourGuide →

🎒 What to actually pack

Rainforest walking has its own small set of rules that regular hiking does not, mostly to do with staying dry and comfortable underneath a closed canopy.

• A light rain jacket. Even on a clear day, rainforest canopy drips long after any actual rain has passed.
• Shoes with real grip. Boardwalks and exposed roots get slippery, especially in the tropics.
• Insect repellent. Both leeches and mosquitoes are a genuine feature of rainforest walking, particularly in the wet season.
• A dry bag for your phone or camera. Humidity and sudden downpours are common enough to be worth planning around.
• Water, even for short walks. Tropical humidity dehydrates faster than the temperature alone suggests.

Most of these walks are well-maintained boardwalks suitable for almost any fitness level, which is part of what makes rainforest such an accessible kind of wild in Australia. You do not need to be an experienced hiker to stand under a 500-year-old fig tree — you just need to show up and slow down.

🦜 Wildlife to watch for on rainforest walks

Rainforest walking rewards patience and quiet more than almost any other kind of hiking in Australia. The animals here are shy, well camouflaged, and used to a canopy that muffles sound, so a noisy group tends to see far less than a quiet pair of walkers moving slowly.

• 🦤 Southern cassowary. A large, flightless, prehistoric-looking bird found in Far North Queensland’s rainforests, most often spotted early morning or late afternoon near Mission Beach and the Daintree.
• 🐍 Amethystine python. Australia’s largest snake species, occasionally seen coiled in low branches in tropical rainforest, generally more interested in avoiding you than anything else.
• 🦎 Boyd’s forest dragon. A small, dinosaur-like lizard endemic to the Wet Tropics, remarkably well camouflaged against tree bark.
• 🐨 Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo. A genuinely strange animal found only on the Atherton Tablelands, spending most of its life in the canopy rather than on the ground.
• 🦇 Spectacled flying fox. Large fruit bats commonly seen at dusk leaving daytime roosts in large, noisy colonies across tropical rainforest areas.
• 🐸 Green tree frogs. Common and easy to spot near creeks and boardwalks, especially after rain.

📷 Rainforest wildlife photography tips

Low light under a closed canopy is the biggest challenge for rainforest photography. A camera or phone with reasonable low-light performance helps considerably, and moving slowly rather than stopping abruptly gives animals less reason to bolt before you get a shot.

🌡️ Understanding Wet Tropics seasons

Far North Queensland’s rainforest operates on two distinct seasons, and understanding them changes both what you should pack and what you should expect from a walk.

The dry season, roughly May to October, brings lower humidity, fewer mosquitoes and leeches, and a much lower chance of track closures. Waterfalls run lower during this period but are still generally photogenic. The wet season, from November to April, brings the forest to its most lush and dramatic state, with waterfalls at full force, but also significant humidity, more insects, and a real chance of localised flooding closing certain tracks with little notice. Neither season is objectively better — it depends whether you prioritise comfort or drama.

🌿 The science behind why these forests matter

The Daintree Rainforest is frequently described as the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforest on Earth, with plant lineages dating back over 180 million years, predating flowering plants across most of the rest of the world. Walking through it, you are moving through living connections to a period before Australia separated from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana.

Tasmania’s cool temperate rainforest tells a related but different story. Species like myrtle beech and the ancient Antarctic beech found in the Border Ranges are direct descendants of forests that once covered Antarctica itself, before the continent drifted south and froze over. Recognising this deep history adds a different kind of weight to what might otherwise look like just another patch of green forest.

🧭 Combining rainforest walks with reef and outback

Far North Queensland has a rare geographic advantage: it is the only place on Earth where two UNESCO World Heritage sites, the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics rainforest, sit close enough together to visit both in a single day.

A well-planned Cairns or Port Douglas base lets you combine a morning reef snorkelling trip with an afternoon rainforest walk at Mossman Gorge, or extend into a longer loop through the Atherton Tablelands for waterfalls and crater lakes. Few other regions in the world let you move between coral reef and ancient rainforest with so little travel time in between, and it is worth structuring an itinerary specifically to take advantage of that rather than treating the two as separate trips.

🩹 Dealing with leeches and other minor rainforest nuisances

Leeches are a genuine, if mostly harmless, feature of wet season rainforest walking, particularly in Tasmania and the New South Wales subtropical forests. They are unpleasant rather than dangerous, and a few simple habits keep encounters to a minimum.

• 🧦 Tuck long pants into socks. This single habit stops the vast majority of leech attachments on the lower legs.
• 🧂 Carry a small amount of salt or a leech-specific repellent. Both are effective if you do pick one up, encouraging it to detach without leaving the bite site irritated.
• 🔍 Check exposed skin at rest stops. A quick check every twenty minutes or so catches most leeches before they properly attach.
• 🦟 Use a proper insect repellent for mosquitoes. Standard repellents work well against mosquitoes even if they do little against leeches specifically.

None of this should discourage a wet season visit if that is when your trip happens to fall. The forest is genuinely more alive during this period, and a few minor leech encounters are a small price for waterfalls running at full force and a canopy dripping with the kind of humidity that makes everything smell like growth and rain.

👨‍👩‍👧 Rainforest walks for families

Most of the boardwalk-style rainforest walks on this list are genuinely well suited to families, being flat, well-signed and short enough for younger legs. Mossman Gorge, the Dorrigo skywalk and the various Cape Tribulation boardwalks all fall comfortably into this category.

Turning the walk into a small scavenger hunt for kids, looking for particular leaf shapes, fungi, or the telltale signs of animal activity, keeps younger walkers engaged far longer than simply following a path. A number of visitor centres, including at Mossman Gorge and Dorrigo, run guided walks specifically designed with families in mind, often including hands-on interpretation of plants and wildlife that a self-guided walk would otherwise miss.

Whichever forest you choose, the same basic approach applies everywhere on this list: slow down, look up as often as you look ahead, and give the walk more time than the signposted distance suggests. Rainforest rarely rewards a rushed pace, and the details that make these places genuinely special, the smallest orchids, the frogs tucked into leaf litter, the quiet weight of trees that predate human history, are almost always missed by anyone moving too quickly to notice them.

That is really the whole appeal of rainforest walking in Australia, in the end. It is one of the few kinds of travel here that asks you to move slower rather than cover more ground.