Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Towers in the treetops.
An introduction to the engineering of Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, from Smithfield near the coast to Kuranda on the range.
On this page
Read the route
The cableway climbs from the Smithfield terminal, 5 metres above sea level, to Red Peak at 545 metres, then runs on past Barron Falls to Kuranda at 336 metres. The steepest section has a slope of 19 degrees.
A guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice how the line follows the range, and how the forest changes as you climb.
Cable and towers
Thirty-two towers carry the line; the tallest, Tower 6, is 45 metres high. The haul rope is about 15 km of galvanised steel, driven by electric motors at Smithfield and Kuranda, each with backup drives.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you how a tower was flown in or who walked in to build it.
A Skyrail chapter
Skyrail shows one side of the region’s recent history: a tourism project built inside a World Heritage area, planned around the forest it crosses.
Look at the meeting of the two: the steel towers and cables, and the canopy that closes around them.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the cableway’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who built them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
