Here are some free and varied Daintree Walks for you to enjoy on your visit  to Cairns & Tropical North Queensland and the Daintree National Park.
 
Mossman Gorge is in the Daintree National Park and is now on Australian Short Walks App. Other local walks that are also on the app are Port Douglas Coastcare Walk, Port Douglas Historic Walk and Mossman Historic Walks with Cairns CBD Heritage Walk to be added soon.

MOSSMAN  GORGE.
Mossman Gorge. The closest Daintree National Park walk to Port Douglas. It is on the way to Daintree and has the highest visitation rate of all the walks up here. Allow 30 minutes to reach the carpark from Port Douglas.
GETTING THERE: 
Access from Front Street, Mossman. Look for signs at Johnston Road, next intersection after Woolworths traveling north.
When you get there, there is a short walk along the Mossman River where there are picnic tables and toilets. A lot of people swim from here and the water is cold. In the hot months of November and December locals come here to swim and the water is still cold. In the wet season it is dangerous to swim here because the current is too strong and you could get washed away and maybe caught up in the big boulders and drown.
There is short loop track with interpretive signage and some good lookouts over the gorge itself. See map.
There is a real rainforest walk after the bridge and a stunning lookout just a short way into the trip. It would be hard not to have some sort of spiritual experience as you look out from Manjal Dimbi Lookout. To do the loop takes about an hour and it is wise to stay on the main track. You will encounter the Australian Brush Turkey on the way around. This is not a real turkey, it is a megapod and is the rainforest gardener. You will hear some of the rainforest birds but they will be difficult to see. Listen out for the tenor voice of the Wompoo Fruit-Dove and the scratchy call of the Spotted Catbird.

WONGA BEACH WALK. On the way to Daintree ( Latitude South 16 deg 20 min, Longitude East 145 deg 30 min.) is in the northern end of Trinity Bay. Cairns is at the southern end. It is the only beach in Trinity Bay that you can walk along, without seeing artifacts, and really experience a wilderness feeling. It has a beautiful lush back drop of huge Calophyllum trees interspersed with Coconut palms. In 1770 Captain Cook named the northern bay's continental Island Snapper Island and the near-by coral cay Low Isles. A 30 mile light house was installed on the smaller cay in 1898. Looking south from Wonga Beach you can see Island Point which shelters the harbour entrance of Port Douglas. It looks like an island from offshore. The rainforest clad mountain range to the north is called Alexandra Range after a Danish princess who married the Prince of Wales. The rainforest clad mountain range behind Wonga Beach is called Dagmar Range after Alexandra's younger sister. Dagmar married into the Russian royal family becoming Empress Marie Fedodorovna. The last three features were named by the discoverer of Daintree, George Elphingstone Dalrymple, a servant of the crown. George was careful enough to keep his masters happy by naming features after them but also considered his fellow mariners following in his wake. Island Point is a good example. The two ranges and Wonga Beach form the boundaries of the Daintree Valley and could rightfully earn Wonga Beach the title Daintree Beach.
The Daintree River, Wonga Beach and the beach end of Alexandra Range form a natural funnel when the prevailing south-east trade winds are taken into account and explain why there are no sandflies at Wonga Beach and there are so many different species of mangroves in the Daintree. Firstly sandflies cannot operate in that sort of wind and mangrove seeds float and are taken along the surface of the water by wind and currents. They collect in the Daintree River estuary and along Wonga Beach because of this natural funnel effect. Beachcombing along Wonga has it's rewards with these seeds and other flotsam which includes pumice originating in the subterranean volcanoes of the Pacific Ocean. There is a maintained grave along the beach. It belongs to a maritime hero Charlie Lifu and includes an inscription of his feats. It is behind the beach near the Close that bears his name.
Behind the coastal vegetation is an extra-ordinary array of architecture. From the quaint owner built holiday and fishing shacks of the 1930's to the newer multi million dollar homes.
Sadly the latter outnumber the former as Far North Queensland's character changes.
Three sort after bird species can be found here. Beach Stone-curlews are reliably seen at the northern end of the beach. Tiny Double-eyed Fig-Parrots and Little (Gould's) Bronze-Cuckoos are seen and heard directly behind the beach at the southern end. Ospreys nest on the telecom tower on the highway. The loud calls of Bush Stone-curlews and Orange-footed Scrubfowls are heard of a night time along the coastal strip.


DAINTREE VILLAGE NATURAL WALK.  Reached from Pioneers Park in the village, walk up past the water treatment plant (steep).

The forest along the ridge overlooking the river and the Daintree Village is described as being in a successional stage. It is a forest undergoing changes in its specie types as one specie prepares the way for and is replaced by others until a stable state is reached. It can be guessed that this hillside was exposed to occasional cyclonic winds and frequent fires over many centuries, until quite recently when only two small fires have been seen in 20 years, one in 2003. Under such conditions the vegetation will have been an open woodland dominated by eucalypt (gum) trees with wattles (acacias) and sheoak (Allocasuarinas ) as sub canopy trees above an under story of Kangaroo Grass (Themeda triandra) and Bladey Grass (Imperata cylindrical ). In places of high rainfall such as the Daintree region a reduction in the frequency of fires allows several species of rainforest trees to arrive as "pioneers" which begin to colonise the understory. If freedom from fire and big blows persist for a few decades the plants of the understory will produce enough shade and damp to prevent eucalypt seeds and seeds of most other open forest species from producing healthy seedlings. In time the eucalypts and most of the wattle species will die out and be succeeded by a good range of rainforest species. This is the derivation of the term "successional stage".

Daintree Village Walk MORE...

MANJAL JIMALJI TRAIL.   Manjal Jimalji trail is not your normal stroll in the park. It requires fitness, experience and planning. Even the start point is hard to find and for that reason it has been put onto a different page. It is still being worked on.