How big is the Cathedral Fig tree in Danbulla National Park, QLD?

The Cathedral Fig tree in Danbulla National Park in the Atherton Tableland near Cairns has a girth of 72 metres – although it’s the huge mess of roots that make it look truly spectacular.

It doesn’t take long for the Gillies Highway near Cairns to seem… well, not really much like a highway all. Rising up from the coast, it becomes very serpentine very quickly, wriggling and switchbacking around the green, almost Toblerone chunk-shaped mountains. The sugar cane fields soon give way to precipitous drops and impressive lookouts cut into the hillsides.

In this part of Queensland, the Great Dividing Range – which stretches pretty much all the way up the east of Australia – comes very close to the coast. And the Atherton Tableland is part of it.

The Cathedral Fig tree in Danbulla National Park

It’s also part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, of which Danbulla National Park is but a mere bite-sized piece of the overall 900,000 hectares stretching over 450km between Townsville and Cooktown. But Danbulla National Park has something pretty special – the Cathedral Fig tree.

The Cathedral Fig in the Danbulla National Park, near Cairns, Queensland. — The Cathedral Fig in the Danbulla National Park, near Cairns, Far North Queensland. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Going out of your way just to see a tree might seem like a fairly pointless pursuit, but the Cathedral Fig is an absolute monster of a tree, and one pretty much guaranteed to provoke a “wow” once it comes into sight after a short walk from the car park.

Size of the Cathedral Fig tree

Signs give the stats. The Cathedral Fig tree has a 72 metre girth, and plays host to ten different types of vines and epiphytes. But what’s really staggering are the roots – it’s a spindly mess of them, dangling down from up on high. This is typical behaviour for the green fig – also known as the strangler fig. They find a host tree, then grow all over it, choking it to death in the process. It’s hard luck for that host tree, but it looks pretty spectacular to the neutral observer.

Elsewhere in the Atherton Tableland, it’s possible to swim in Lake Eacham, see a platypus in Peterson Creek, shop at the Yungaburra Markets, get a selfie at Windin Falls, climb Mount Bartle Frere, swim at Millaa Millaa Falls or hold a koala in Kuranda. Car hire in Cairns is cheap if you want to do it as a day trip.