After our visit to Kuranda, we rode the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway above the rainforest canopy of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Voted Australia’s Best Major Tourist Attraction, the Skyrail provides spectacular views of this ancient rainforest.
At our first stop at the Barron Falls Station, we had beautiful views of Barron Gorge and Falls.
Our next stop was at Red Peak Station, where a ranger provided an interpretive guided boardwalk tour of the rainforest’s diverse plant species, including ferns, palms and towering trees.
The strangler fig takes root at the top of a host tree (I spotted several of these from the gondola) and grows its roots downward. After several decades when the roots are finally established in the ground, it eventually chokes off the host tree – thus its name.
Lianas (climbing vines)
A centuries-old Queensland kauri pine
Basket fern
After our tour, we returned to the Skyrail and continued our journey out of the rainforest to the Smithfield Terminal.
A red-tailed black cockatoo squawks a goodbye