Cataract Gorge

Cataract Gorge Reserve is a five-kilometre stretch of forested gorge where the South Esk River cuts through dolerite 1.5 kilometres from the centre of Launceston. At its heart is the First Basin — a pool measured at 20.5 metres deep in 2016 — with lawns, a free swimming pool and the Cliff Grounds, a Victorian garden with a historic rotunda where peacocks share the grass with wallabies and pademelons. The City of Launceston manages the reserve as a council reserve rather than a national park: entry is free, there is no Parks Pass and no gate, and you can walk here from the CBD in about 15 minutes via Paterson Street and Kings Bridge. The gorge is cut where the Basin Road Fault meets a second, near-perpendicular fault that the river follows, and above it the Gorge Scenic Chairlift has run since 1972 across the First Basin on a 308-metre central span.

Cataract Gorge is significant country for Palawa, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, and the Tasmanian Government's cultural platform names it as the country of the Northern Midlands / Stoney Creek Nation; Aboriginal-guided tours describe it as a historic meeting place for three language groups.

What to expect

Reviewed 10 November 2026

You come in from central Launceston on foot: 1.5 kilometres, about 15 minutes down Paterson Street and over Kings Bridge, which was floated into place in 1867 and still marks the gorge's eastern entrance beside the old gatekeeper's cottage. From the bridge the Cataract Walk runs along the north bank — sealed, easy, 2 kilometres return — with the South Esk on your left and the dolerite walls above. The gorge runs for about 5 kilometres as a forested reserve, and the city is never far: hillside houses look down into it from West Launceston and Trevallyn. The river is regulated — Trevallyn Dam, built in the 1950s, diverts most of its water to the power station upstream — so the flow through the gorge is often calmer than the rock suggests, though after heavy rain the whole gorge can flood. At the First Basin the water spreads into a pool that was measured at 20.5 metres deep in 2016, which rather spoils the local story that it is bottomless.

The First Basin is where everything happens: lawns, the swimming pool, the Basin Café and kiosk, toilets, showers and the Cliff Grounds just up the slope. The pool is free and opens in November; lifeguards work weekends from 11am to 4pm and every day through the Tasmanian school holidays, and weekend supervision finishes in April. If steps are a problem, the free inclinator — an enclosed cabin on a toothed rail — runs between the car park level, the café level and the picnic ground, and if it breaks down the council arranges special vehicle access into the reserve from 7am to 4.30pm Monday to Thursday and 7am to 4pm Friday on 6323 3000. The Basin Road car park is metered at $1 an hour or $6 a day.

Tracks split into two kinds here. The Cataract Walk and the First Basin Loop are sealed and easy, and that is the gorge for most visitors. Everything else earns its rating: the Zig Zag Track climbs from Kings Bridge to the First Basin on the south side, about 1 kilometre of steep, rocky, unsealed climbing, and the Duck Reach walk is graded 3 with about 190 steps and rough surfaces in places. The Reed Gully and Snake Gully tracks drop 2 kilometres to the power station on steep ground and the council recommends a map for them. A bushfire in 2025 burnt about 200 metres of track near Sentinel Lookout; the council stabilised the cliffs, repaired bridges and walkways and reopened the Duck Reach Walking Track on 14 November 2025.

The Cliff Grounds on the northern side are a Victorian garden laid into the gorge: a historic rotunda, a restaurant and kiosk, a children's play space, and plantings that give the place its seasons. Rhododendrons grow tall enough to ride past at the chairlift entrance in spring, and the ornamental trees turn orange and red through autumn. The wildlife is unusually relaxed for a reserve this close to a city: peacocks strut the lawns, and wallabies and pademelons move between the grassland, woodland, dry forest and wet gullies. The gorge also holds the Cataract Gorge snail, a threatened native about 2 millimetres long found nowhere else, and Hydro Tasmania has studied how river levels affect it. Expect company — on a warm summer afternoon the car park fills and the pool fence lines up three deep, so come early or come on a weekday. Stay on the formed tracks: Tourism Tasmania's advice is to use the designated paths rather than push into off-track areas such as Hidden Valley and the Giant's Grave.

Then there is the chairlift. The Gorge Scenic Chairlift has run since 1972 and carries you 457 metres from station to station across the First Basin, with a 308-metre central span that Tourism Tasmania describes as the longest single span of its kind in the world. The chairs travel at about a metre per second, from 9am every day of the year, with evening closing times that shift with the season, and the whole thing shuts down in severe weather. It is the easy way to see the gorge without climbing, and an even better way to avoid walking back up. Below it the South Esk runs cold all year — properly cold, and it does not warm up much even in January.