Australia: Queensland – Josephine Falls

A Right Soaking at Josephine Falls, Queensland

🌧️ How We Ended Up There

We hadn’t planned this one at all. We were driving up the Bruce Highway from Townsville towards Cairns when we kept passing signs for Josephine Falls, and after the third or fourth one Karen said we may as well have a look, seeing as we weren’t in any particular rush. So we took the detour, off the highway near a little spot called Miriwinni, then followed the signposts towards Mount Bartle Frere for another eight kilometres or so until we reached the car park. I wasn’t sure it’d be worth the diversion, but Karen’s instincts are usually better than mine on these things, so I kept quiet and drove.

The falls sit inside Wooroonooran National Park, which is part of something called the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. That whole area was declared a World Heritage Site back in 1988, and it stretches all the way from Townsville up to Cooktown, which is a fair old stretch by anyone’s standards, and explains why we’d been driving through rainforest for what felt like ages without really clocking it. It’s reckoned to be some of the oldest surviving rainforest anywhere in the world, so you’re not just paddling about in any old puddle, you’re paddling about in something rather ancient.

The walking track from the car park is about 600 metres through the rainforest, leading up to platforms built so you can have a good look at the falls without falling in yourself. Easy enough going, even for an old fella like me with a dodgy knee. The water comes down off the slopes of Mount Bartle Frere, which then flows into the Russell River, and Bartle Frere, for what it’s worth, is the highest mountain in the whole of Queensland at 1,622 metres. You can’t see the top of it from the falls most days as it’s usually wrapped in cloud, sulking like an Englishman who’s forgotten his umbrella.

🏛️ A Bit of History, Whether You Asked For It Or Not

Now here’s a funny thing. The mountain was named in 1873 by a chap called George Elphinstone Dalrymple, after Sir Henry Bartle Frere, who was a British colonial administrator and the president of the Royal Geographical Society at the time. Trouble is, old Bartle Frere never set foot on the mountain himself, and as far as anyone knows, never even visited Australia. Funny old way to get your name on a mountain, just by being important and having a mate with a pen. And it’s not even a name worth being proud of, as Frere went on to be Governor of the Cape Colony, where his policies helped spark wars including the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Bit grim, that, considering it’s such a lovely spot.

The first European to actually climb the mountain was a chap called Christie Palmerston, in October 1886, and he only managed it with help from local Aboriginal guides who knew the terrain. He carved his initials into a tree at the top, as you did in them days apparently, marking it with the date. The Josephine Falls visitor area itself wasn’t actually developed and opened to the public until sometime in the 1970s, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s not been a tourist spot for all that long. Karen reckoned that surprised her, as it felt like it had been there forever, all weathered and proper.

As for the local people, the area belongs to the Noongyanbudda Ngadjon Aboriginal people, who hold a close spiritual connection with both Bartle Frere and the falls, and have done for a very long time before anyone with a clipboard turned up and started naming things after governors. The mountain itself is known to them as Chooreechillum, which I think is a far better name than Bartle Frere if you ask me, much more fitting for a mountain than a man who never bothered visiting it. The wider region was also home to the wujnur, sometimes called the Bindabarra, who were known as the waterfall people, living around waterfalls including Josephine Falls itself, with their main camp at what’s now called Babinda. There’s a noticeboard near the car park that tells you a bit about this, and I’ll be honest, we stood there longer than I expected, reading the whole thing while the midges had a go at our ankles.

💦 The Falls Themselves, and the Famous Slide

Right, onto the bit you actually want to know about. The water was proper clear, that lovely sort of clear you only get away from cities, and freezing cold even though it was a warm day. There’s a natural granite slide partway up that people slither down into the pool below, though we were warned off going right up to the very top of the falls as the rocks there are slippery as anything and people have come a cropper, some fatally, over the years. So we kept to the marked bits like good little tourists and didn’t fancy ending our holiday on the local news.

Karen had a paddle, declared it bracing, which is her word for absolutely freezing, and I sat on a rock with a flask of tea like the proper Londoner I am, not trusting any water I can’t see the bottom of straight away. There were brush turkeys wandering about looking thoroughly unbothered by us, and somewhere up in the canopy a few birds were making a racket that neither of us could identify, not being the bird-watching sort.

All in all, a smashing little impromptu stop. Cost us nothing but a bit of extra petrol and an hour or two, and we left feeling rather pleased with ourselves for following the signs instead of driving straight past like we’d originally meant to. Sometimes the best bits of a trip are the ones you never planned.