Look across any flat stretch of ocean, river or lake in Australia today and it doesn’t surprise to see humans standing on water. What’s up in the world of water adventures is most definitely SUP – stand-up paddleboarding – a pursuit now worth more than $450 million a year globally. The International Surfing Association has called it the world’s fastest-growing water sport, and lobbying is underway for its inclusion in the 2028 Olympic Games.
One of the great appeals of SUPing is its accessibility. Unlike many other water sports, it doesn’t need waves or wind, or even a reef to spruce things up. In this country girt by sea, with one of the world’s longest coastlines, the SUP possibilities are endless. Paddle out from a local beach, or seek different strokes on one of these uncommon SUP experiences.
The outback SUP
Think of the last place on earth where you might expect to go SUPing, and the Queensland outback might be it. Six hours’ drive inland from Cairns and Townsville, the arid cattle country is fractured by a gorge so narrow and hidden that it took station owners almost 100 years to even discover it on their property.
A virtual paper cut in a deeply fissured sandstone plateau, Cobbold Gorge is the centrepiece of a large tourism operation that features a campground, restaurant, infinity pool, boat tours, Australia’s first fully glass bridge and helicopter tours. Most curiously, it now also runs SUP tours, offering the chance to paddle through the outback.
The gorge is only accessible on guided tours, including daily SUP trips. Come in the day, on the boat tours, and you’ll find freshwater crocodiles basking along the base of the cliffs – there are said to be around a dozen freshies living in the gorge – but in the relative cool of the morning and evening, when the SUP tours take place, the crocs feel like rumours as you set out paddling upstream from the mouth of the gorge.
At around 12,000 years of age, Cobbold is by far Queensland’s youngest gorge – apt for this newest of water sports – and the paddling is gentle. At first, the gorge is wide, with the creek splitting around an outcrop of rock that, on the gorge’s many sunny days, is a favourite croc sunbaking post. The cliffs are painted by nature in classic outback colours – rust-red and jaffa-orange – and streaked black by the ephemeral waterfalls that pour into the gorge in the wet season.
Partway through the gorge, you paddle beneath Cobbold’s 13-m-long bridge with its 41-mm-thick glass, and continue delving deeper into the gorge, with its cliffs rising up to 30m overhead.
The gorge curves and curls, becoming narrower the deeper it burrows into the sandstone plateau until finally, about 800m from the mouth of the gorge, you can proceed no further. Cobbold Gorge is so narrow now that it takes an Austin Powers-like 35-point turn to swing the board around, returning through this unusual star of the SUP world.
The heli SUP
You can get it skiing, you can get it mountain biking, and now you can get it – a helicopter, that is – for SUPing. Hitching a ride through the sky to make a remote start is the twist in the tale on paddleboarding trips in the Gippsland Lakes with local operator Venture Out.
From the airstrip outside of Lakes Entrance, a chopper takes SUPers on a 30-minute flight, looping over the lakes, which stretch out long and thin below, as well as the ocean entrance that gives Lakes Entrance its name, and the islands that speckle the lakes.
On small Fraser Island, home to one of country Victoria’s grandest mansions (complete with nine-hole golf course), the helicopter touches down and the five-kilometre paddle back to Lakes Entrance begins. Most of the journey is along the shores of Rigby Island, where fairy terns and other seabirds queue along the sandy edges, unbothered by these slow boards drifting past so near. The wildlife on the water can be of the more human variety, with the Gippsland Lakes popular with boaties, jet skiers and water skiers, literally rocking the boat – or the SUP in this case – as they pass. On good days, there’s other wildlife here also, with the lakes home to around 65 Burrunan dolphins as well as up to 20,000 seabirds. Some days it feels as if every one of those birds is watching you from Rigby Island.
From Rigby’s sandy eastern tip, you paddle across the amber-coloured lake to the nearby ‘entrance’ – the channel cut through the dunes in the 1880s to connect the lakes to the ocean. After gliding ashore, it’s a short walk across the sand to the entrance’s ocean edge, where Australian fur seals dart about the water like torpedoes and the Southern Ocean slips away towards Antarctica.
Back on the boards, Lakes Entrance rises immediately across the lake, but the paddle continues east, skirting the town’s fishing fleet and invariably pushing into a building wind. It’s as though your SUP has suddenly acquired a hand brake, but slowly the town glides past – expect mock encouragement from boaties and pedestrians – until you finally pull ashore outside the doors of Venture Out’s Esplanade store on this trip of air, water and now earth.
The indigenous SUP
Conventional SUP wisdom traces the origins of the activity to Hawaii, but Gumbaynggirr man Clark Webb suggests otherwise. As his tour guests prepare to paddle on Moonee Creek, just north of Coffs Harbour, he notes that Australia’s Indigenous people paddled in canoes in which they often stood. They were surely the world’s first stand-up paddleboarders.
It’s an intriguing introduction to a SUP trip with a difference, as much about culture as the act of paddling. Webb’s company, Wajaana Yaam Adventure Tours, runs SUP trips on three waterways around Coffs, but it’s Moonee Creek that has a crucial place in the Gumbaynggirr creation story.
Tours take place around high tide, when the river is inflated with water. From the riverbank beside a suburban street, you glide out into the creek on your knees, drifting on the flow towards the mouth of the creek, just a couple of kilometres downstream. The gentle nature of the waterway, known to the Gumbaynggirr as muniim muniim, means you’re quickly up on your feet, paddling easily over seagrass beds, fish and the occasional sting ray reclining on the sandy creek bed. Mangroves line the banks, growing atop the area’s curious coffee rock, which filters out salt from the water, allowing a range of bush to grow atop it.
It’s not long until the furious spray of the Pacific surf becomes visible over the top of the white line of Moonee Beach, onto which you run the SUPs ashore, setting out on foot along the sands in sight of the Solitary Islands. Here, Webb explains the significance of the site, both culturally and ecologically – Moonee Creek is part of the Solitary Islands Marine Park, where the warm waters of the East Australian Current meet cooler waters from the south in a rich marine environment (around 550 species of reef fish have been recorded here). It’s a special place, even well beyond the fact that Moonee Beach was once named one of Australia’s most beautiful beaches, and this is a special way to discover it.
The tropical SUP
Think north Queensland waters and invariably crocodiles spring to mind. But even as you step past a yellow croc warning sign on the bank of the Mossman River, there’s reassurance in the clarity of the water. Paddling on this river, skirting the edge of the vast Wet Tropics Word Heritage area, is like drifting on air.
Guides with local tour operator Windswell Kitesurfing and Standup Paddle claim to have never seen a crocodile in this stretch of the river at the edge of the town of Mossman, downstream from famously clear Mossman Gorge. What you see instead is a profusion of rainforest, and the beauty and clarity of the transparent river.
Paddling trips begin heading upstream; the river encased in classic north Qld forest. This Mossman’s flow is more powerful than Cobbold Gorge and Moonee Creek, making it a greater test of your ability and stability –guides will challenge you into SUP yoga moves, which may result in tumbles from your board!
Beside a Tarzan swing over the river – take a shot; see if you can land back on your board – the paddle turns back, drifting now with the flow. It’s a chance to relax and lie back on the board, letting the river do all the work as it delivers you back to your starting point.
