Are the Cairns Botanic Gardens worth visiting?

If you’re not in Cairns for long, and have day trips booked, it’s not worth visiting the Cairns Botanic Gardens. If you’re in tropical North Queensland’s hub city for longer, then two sections make the gardens worth visiting.

Cairns is the all-action hub of tropical North Queensland, but it has a dirty secret – there’s not all that much to see there. There are hundreds of worthwhile tours departing from Cairns, but in the Queensland city itself, there’s not an awful lot apart from a casino where you can hold a koala and the Cairns Aquarium. The Great Barrier Reef hub is pleasant enough to hang out in, but the action’s all about the excursions.

So, when assessing whether it’s worth visiting the Cairns Botanic Gardens, this is worth bearing in mind. If you’re just there for a couple of days with trips to the Reef, Daintree River rainforest and Atherton Tableland booked, then of course it’s not worth visiting the Cairns Botanic Gardens.

Save time queuing – Book these Cairns attractions in advance

From the air: Outer Reef helicopter flight | Sunrise hot air balloon ride | Skyrail Rainforest Cableway.
At night: Sunset dinner cruise | Pub and club tour | Aquarium by Twilight experience.
For wildlife: Birdworld Kuranda | Kuranda Koala Gardens | Cairns Zoom and Wildlife Dome | Cairns Aquarium | Rainforestation Nature Park
For culture: Cairns Museum tickets | Street art walking tour | City and surrounds highlights bus tour.
For thrills: AJ Hackett giant jungle swing | High speed jet boat tour | Barron Gorge white water rafting | Mulgrave River tubing.

Visiting Cairns Botanic Gardens

If you’re hanging out in Cairns for a bit longer, then the gardens are worth visiting in the down time between day trips.

Formerly known as the Flecker Botanic Gardens, the Cairns Botanic Gardens is around 4.5km north of central Cairns. Its strength is in its educational layout, with plants and trees divided very deliberately into well-presented sections. Two, in particular, are worth visiting.

Cairns Botanic Garden walking trail — Walking trail in the Cairns Botanic Gardens.

Gondwana Evolution Garden in Cairns Botanic Gardens

The first of these is the Gondwana Evolution Garden. This tackles plant life from a chronological basis, starting with the origins of life on earth. It then explains the cyanobacteria that first started putting oxygen back into the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

This is all on signposts at the start, but the walk round soon starts tackling the evolution of plantlife. Early on in proceedings are the ferns, which arrived during the carboniferous period 360 million years ago. Then came the gymnosperms (cycads), followed by the conifers and finally the angiosperms, or flowering plants. Laying examples of the species out like a timeline is an ingenious idea, and one that really aids understanding.

The amble through time finishes about 15 million years ago. This was when Australia’s tectonic isolation finished as it crunched into the remnants of the great Laurasia supercontinent. This whole process started when Pangaea – an even bigger supercontinent – split into two, around 200 million years ago. Laurasia went north, and Gondwana south – with Australia joining what are now Africa, Antarctica and South America. This explains why there is some commonality in plant species between these continents today. But around 50 million years ago, Australia broke from Gondwana and became isolated. This allowed species to evolve independently of outside influence.

Then, around 15 million years ago, the islands that had split from Laurasia clattered into Australia. Some Asian species made their way to Oz via New Guinea. Hence banana and ginger plants finding themselves on Australian soil…

Aboriginal Plant Use Garden in Cairns Botanic Gardens

The other eye-opening section of the gardens is the Aboriginal Plant Use Garden. This, as the name suggests, looks at how plants native to the area have traditionally been used. One thing that’s surprising is how certain treatment is required of plants and seeds before they are edible. This comes up time and time again across various species.

These are the sort of things that get worked out over hundreds – if not thousands – of years. The zamia fern, for example, has tubers that are only edible after pounding, leaching and roasting. The seeds of the Queensland cycads also require complex preparation work before eating. But mix the leaf stalk with urine and you can use it to treat wounds.

Several plants have such multiple, complexes uses. For example, the kernels of the candlenut are good to eat once roasted. But you can use hollowed nuts as whistles and the nut oil to fix ochres and light fires. Meanwhile, the sap can be used to treat fungal infection, and the leaves are handy for lining ovens.

Barringtonia asiatica in Cairns Botanic Gardens

Elsewhere, the fish poison tree (officially, Barringtonia asiatica) would be used for catching fish. Crush the fruit and leaves, place it in the waterway, and the dying and dead fish killed by it would just bob up to the surface. And even different lilies would be put to entirely different purposes – the river lily’s leaves would be crushed to treat jellyfish stings, while extracts from the palm lily’s roots would be used as a contraceptive.

This sort of presentation and signposting can get quickly absorbing. And, if you’ve got the time, it’s what makes the Cairns Botanic Gardens worth a look.

Other things to do in Cairns include snorkelling cruises to Hastings Reef and Moore Reef from the Reef Fleet Terminal.