Kuranda Skyrail and Scenic Railway: The best day trip from Cairns.
If you've ever looked up day trips from Cairns and seen that photo of a vintage train curving across a waterfall bridge, you already know this one. That's the Kuranda Scenic Railway, and it lives up to every image. But the full day that leads up to that moment, floating over ancient World Heritage rainforest, standing on the edge of a 265-metre gorge, wandering the most eclectic little market village you've ever been to, is just as good. Here's everything you need to know.
The SkyRail Rainforest Cableway
We went up on the SkyRail and back down on the Scenic Railway, and almost everyone says that's the right way to do it. The cableway runs 7.5 kilometres from Smithfield in Cairns up to Kuranda, gliding the entire way directly over the top of an unbroken ancient rainforest canopy.
There are two stops along the way, Red Peak and Barron Falls, and you hop off and board a new gondola to continue. Don't skip them. The boardwalks and free ranger-guided walks at each stop are well worth the time, and there's a free audio guide app with Dreamtime stories from the traditional custodians. Just scan the QR codes at the terminal to access it.
Barron Falls and Barron Gorge
The Barron Falls stop is a genuine wow moment. The gorge is massive, carved by the Barron River as it drops from the Atherton Tablelands, and the falls themselves drop 260 metres. In the wet season they're thundering. In the dry season the granite tiers and rock formations are fully exposed and just as dramatic.
The viewing platform is wide and generous and even with a crowd you get a clear view. Then, later on the Scenic Railway you see the falls all over again from the opposite side of the gorge, which gives you a completely different sense of just how big the whole thing is.
Kuranda - The Village in the Rainforest
It's a short, gentle walk uphill from the gondola terminal into the village. The main street has a mix of shops, some touristy, some genuinely unexpected. Keep an eye out for Miss Fortune, a retired DC-3 aircraft that was painted back up as a warplane and appeared in a 1986 film called Sky Pirates. It now sits in the rainforest looking like it crash-landed there, with greenery growing through it. Very unusual, very Kuranda.
The Rainforest Markets
The Original Rainforest Markets were established in 1978, and they are one of the best market experiences we've had anywhere. Winding paths through tiered stalls under a rainforest canopy, with buskers, handmade crafts, indigenous art, a Japanese tea house, a well-loved donut shop, a Latin American bar (we had a mojito, in the rainforest, which was wonderful), and a little putt putt golf course tucked in among the trees.
Inside the markets is the Emu Ridge Gallery, also known as the Kuranda Gem Museum. It's free to enter, with an extraordinary collection of gems, crystals, fossils and minerals, and a full museum downstairs with dinosaur fossils and meteorites. One of the guys who runs it came outside and invited us in. Don't walk past it.
The Kuranda Scenic Railway
The history of this railway is extraordinary. Construction started in 1887, built by 1,500 workers, most of Irish and Italian descent, who carved 15 tunnels by hand, built 55 bridges, and removed 2.3 million cubic metres of earth through some of the most rugged mountain terrain you've ever seen. It's one of Australia's great engineering achievements and riding it feels like the right way to honour that. We arrived at Kuranda Railway Station a little early. It's a heritage-listed 1913 Swiss chalet-style building with tropical gardens and the Kuranda Railway Tea Rooms. We had time to have a pot of tea and scones before our train. The carriages date back to the early 1900s, silky oak timber, wide and spacious with beautiful ceiling detail. And when we boarded a full carriage, the conductor came through and rearranged everyone, so every single passenger had a proper window seat.
Stony Creek Falls and the Journey Down
The train commentary runs the whole way and it's genuinely interesting. The first stop is Barron Falls Station, where you step off and look back across the gorge from the other side. This is actually our favourite view of the falls because you can see both waterfalls feeding into the one and fully appreciate the scale of the gorge below.
The showstopper is the Stony Creek Falls Bridge. The train curves across a wrought iron trestle bridge with Barron Gorge dropping away on one side and the falls right beside the carriage on the other. The train slows right down. From where we were sitting, we could see the full curve of the train ahead, the gorge on one side, the waterfall on the other. Even better than we expected.
From there the views open up over Cairns and the ocean as you wind down, and you roll into Cairns Railway Station, step up into Cairns Central Shopping Centre, and you're three blocks from the Esplanade
We loved every part of this day. If you're heading to Cairns, we highly recommend doing this day trip. It’s full of spectacular scenery, the gondola and train are so unique and fun and exploring the markets was definitely a highlight of our day.