Daintree National Park is located in Far North Queensland, Australia, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Cairns. It was established in 1981 and is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland. In 1988, it became a World Heritage Site. The park has two parts—Mossman Gorge and Cape Tribulation—with a region containing farms and towns, including Mossman and Daintree Village, between them.

One entrance to the park is located south of the Daintree River at Mossman Gorge. A visitor center there allows tourists to take a shuttle bus to the gorge, where they can walk or swim.

Daintree National Park is important because it has a wide variety of plants and animals. It provides homes for rare species and many types of birds. The park’s name comes from the Daintree River, which was named by explorer George Elphinstone Dalrymple after his friend Richard Daintree.

In 2021, a deal with the Queensland government gave the eastern Kuku Yalanji people official ownership of Daintree National Park.

Mossman Gorge section

The Great Dividing Range is near the coast in this area. This region covers 56,500 hectares (140,000 acres) of mostly hard-to-reach rainforests and mountain woodlands. Mossman Gorge is in the southern part of the park. Found 75 kilometers (47 miles) north of Cairns, along the Captain Cook Highway and Mossman, the gorge has many scenic walking paths, such as Baral Marrjanga, Lower River Track, Rex Creek Bridge, and the Rainforest Circuit Track. The area is home to important plant and animal species, including Boyd's forest dragon and Victoria's riflebird.

Cape Tribulation section

Cape Tribulation is located within the park. It was originally part of Cape Tribulation National Park from 1981 but was combined with Daintree National Park in 1983. This area covers 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres), including the coastal range (Thornton Peak, Mt Hemmant, and Mt Sorrow, extending north from the Daintree River) and contains Australia's last large areas of lowland rainforest. It includes many (and relatively) untouched beaches from Thornton Beach to Cape Tribulation Beach, which are bordered by the increasingly rare littoral (beachside) rainforest. The Daintree River forms the southern boundary of the region, requiring visitors to use a cable ferry to cross the river. Much of the coastal flatlands, especially to the south of the Alexandra Range and in Cow Bay, were cleared for agriculture in the late 1800s, with a major clearing effort in the 1970s. Many of these areas have since recovered or been settled.

The traditional owners of Daintree National Park are the Eastern Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal people. Many natural features in the area hold spiritual significance for them. One such feature is the bouncing stones at Thornton Beach. These rocks are hornfels, a type of metamorphic rock formed by the heat from a large intrusion of granite that created the coastal mountains. They are very elastic when bounced on the local rock pavement. The park includes the Mossman River to the south, the Daintree River, and the Bloomfield River to the north.

This section of the park includes the entire Dagmar locality in the Shire of Douglas, Queensland. It also includes the northern and eastern parts of the adjacent Noah locality. The Daintree River forms the northeastern, northern, and northwestern boundaries of Dagmar, while the Daintree Range loosely forms its southern boundary.

The locality is named after the Heights of Dagmar (now the Dagmar Range), which was named by explorer George Elphinstone Dalrymple during his 1873 exploration of the North East Coast of Queensland. In his report to the Queensland Parliament, Dalrymple described the range as "jungle-clad hills" but did not explain the name's origin. Some believe the name came from the resemblance of the hills to the Dagmar Cross. Dalrymple described the land from the range down to the Daintree River as "luxuriant jungles, filling all the broad valley, and giving evidence of many thousands of acres of the same rich agricultural lands … soon to be the gem of Australia," predicting that agriculture, not mining, would shape Queensland's economy long-term.

Another expedition member, Robert Johnstone (a sub-inspector in the Queensland Police Force), climbed to the top of the Heights of Dagmar and described the range as "fine open grassy hills of good soil; the extent of rich jungle land is very extensive." Another member, Walter Hill (a botanist), described the soil as "first class" and identified a new species of coconut palm. Hill believed the land around the upper Daintree River could support a large population, noting its suitability for growing sugarcane and other tropical crops, as well as for grazing. He also thought the Daintree River would be an effective transport route to the Palmer goldfields to the west.

In April 1886, the Queensland Government offered land for sale in Dagmar, including four parcels of 160 acres (65 hectares) each, followed by additional land sales and pastoral leases. By 1894, several blocks of land had been sold along the Daintree River in the southeast of the current Dagmar boundaries.

In 1942, the Queensland Government set aside land in Dagmar to create a reserve for timber (later known as the Dagmar State Forest). This timber reserve appears on a 1950 map.

The northern and eastern parts of the Noah locality are within Daintree National Park. The southwestern part remains undeveloped land.

Flora

Much of the national park is covered with tropical rainforest. The Greater Daintree Rainforest has existed for more than 110 million years, and may be the oldest rainforest still in existence. Scientists believe the rainforest has remained unchanged because of a chance movement of continents. When the supercontinent that once held the rainforest broke apart, one part moved toward the pole and became Antarctica, changing ocean currents and becoming very cold. Other parts of the continent moved to warmer and drier areas. The rainforests on the parent continent helped keep the same climate, which allowed the original tree species to survive. Some tree species, once thought to be gone forever, were only recently found in this area.

Fauna

The park is home to more than 430 bird species. One of these is the wompoo fruit-dove, which is one of six types of pigeons found there. The park also has many of the endangered cassowary, a large, flightless bird. The buff-breasted paradise kingfisher visits the park seasonally. Mammals in the park include the striped possum, Daintree River ringtail possum, northern brown bandicoot, long-nosed bandicoot, musky rat-kangaroo, Bennett's tree-kangaroo, swamp wallaby, platypus, and short-beaked echidna. At least 23 species of reptile and 13 species of amphibian live in the park. Reptiles include Boyd's forest dragon, eastern water dragon, chameleon gecko, northern leaf-tailed gecko, scrub or amethystine python, keelback, green tree snake, and northern tree snake. Amphibians found in the park include the Australian lacelid, white-lipped treefrog, dainty tree frog, and common mist frog. The cane toad, which was brought to the area by people, is also found in the park.