Around Cairns: Palm Cove to Gordonvale, Australia

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Around Cairns: Palm Cove to Gordonvale, Far North Queensland

Cairns City Council administers not only the city, but also the suburbs and small towns that stretch from the Northern beaches to the sugar town of Gordonvale, within a radius of about 20 km from Cairns itself. Although Cairns City has no beaches, as it is foreshore is muddy mangrove flats, the coast north of the mouth of the Barron River has good sandy beaches and there are quite affluent suburbs here. Without doubt the most prestigious is Palm Cove, Cairns' premier beach, and a seaside resort village with luxury accommodation and all facilities for holiday makers. South of there are a number of other beachside villages, some of those a blend of residents' houses and tourist accommodation, like Clifton Beach, Trinity Beach and Yorkeys Knob and others older residential suburbs with a golden beach nearby, like Machans Beach and Holloways Beach.

Across Cairns Harbour, 37 km from Cairns over the Range at the end of one of the steepest roads in Australia, is Yarrabah, an Aboriginal community that was started by Ernest Gribble, an Anglican missionary in 1892. It became a self governing community in 1986 and is presently a town of around 3000 people with all facilities, including a hospital, primary and secondary school and a very interesting museum, named after Menmuny, the tribal leader who brought his people to this place.

24 km south of Cairns is the town of Gordonvale, named after the local pioneer John Gordon. It became a sugar milling town in 1896 and is still dominated by its sugar mill, servicing the farms around it. It is a quiet town, with a population of around 6000 people. The big event of the year is "The Great Pyramid Race", held every year in August, in which enthusiasts run (or attempt to run) to the top of Walsh's Pyramid, the landmark conical hill, 922 m high, and back. The traditional Aboriginal owners of the Pyramid are the Yidinyji-Malanbarra clan who refer to it as "Djarragun": the mound of Djarruga, the scrub hen. This gave its name to Djarragun College, an indigenous school with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students situated just north of the town.

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