November 12, 2025
Tully is a small sugar mill town about 2 hours south of Cairns and we traveled here with a group of about 20 other residents to go white water rafting in the Tully River at the Gorge in the National Park. It is the beginning of the wet season and the river was running at a high level, so the rapids were class 4 out of 5. We had some trepidation, but were excited for the adventure! OMG so much FUN!!
The landmark of downtown Tully is The Golden Gumboot, with it's interior circular stair that you can climb up 80 feet, to get a scenic overlook of the Sugar Mill and sprawling train lines, that had tons of sugar cane sitting waiting for processing. Banana fields also line the highways, along the way from Cairns to Tully. Once at the river we split into boats of 6 with a guide each. My boat had Bosco, Christy and Gary, Memo and Charlie and our guide was Mylo from Tasmania. We did great, never lost anyone from our boat and even were able to rescue some of our fellow residents who fell out of their rafts. It was the most intense rapids I have ever been in and our guide was super at maximizing our FUN, while still keeping us safe! There were 16 rapids in all we covered in about 3 hours on the river. I was in the back next to Memo, Gary and Charlie were in the middle and Bosco and Christy took the brunt of the first dips in the water in the front. We mostly lined up and steered into the strongest parts of the rapids and then just hunkered in the middle of the raft and enjoyed the ride as the water just spit us out. We got soaked but the water was amazing and freshing.
