About Murray Falls
Murray Falls was a pretty easy waterfall to visit as far as Julie and I were concerned.
The roughly 20m waterfall tumbled over bare rocks worn smooth by the waters of the Murray River (not to be confused by the Murray River belonging to the Murray-Darling basin).
Boulders and water-sculpted rock pools surrounded the falls at its base.
Moreover, it seemed like our early afternoon visit to the falls in May 2008 came at the right time.
Not only did the falls receive pleasant backlighting from the soft glow of the sun, but we also spotted a rare turtle chilling out besides one of these rock pools.
We took a well-established 300m walk to get to a viewing platform near the base of Murray Falls.
As we explored the area, we also noticed that a longer 1.8km walk to the top of the falls that left from the opposite end of the large picnic area where we left our rental car (see directions below).
Call us lazy, but we didn’t do this longer track so we can’t say anything more about it.
However, I did regret not doing it for that top-down perspective from the top of Murray Falls surely would’ve given us a totally different waterfalling experience.
Although the pools looked inviting, we spotted signs urging us to keep out due to slippery rocks.
Perhaps more importantly, the signs tried to keep us from impacting the fragile environment around the Murray River while not disturbing the endangered species here (including the turtles we saw).
Thus, Julie and I only spent about 45 minutes away from the car.
Authorities
Murray Falls resides in the Girramay National Park near Cardwell, Queensland. It is administered by the State of Queensland Department of Environment and Science. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, visit their website.
From Cardwell (where we were staying), we took the Bruce Hwy (A1) north for about 21km.
We then turned left (there’s a signpost indicating this) onto Bilyana Rd.
Next, we followed this road for about 19km to its end (it changed names a couple of times as Middle Murray Rd then became Murray Falls Rd).
We managed to find parking at the large picnic area where the walking track started.
For context, Cardwell was 53km (over 30 minutes drive) north of Ingham, 165km (2 hours drive) north of Townsville, and 182km (over 2 hours drive) south of Cairns.
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Direct look at the falls from one of the lower lookouts (please excuse the garbled sounds thanks to Windows Movie Maker)
Deliberate bottom up sweep of the falls from the closest lookout to the falls itself
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