Albert River Circuit

GPS Tracks

Albert River Circuit (GPX)

A lesser used walk starting at O'Reillys and spawning from the Border track.

Waterfalls

Lookouts

Rainforest

Add to
My Wishlist

Tick Walk

Getting there

Make the drive through Canungara up to the O'Reilly's guest house. The walk starts as part of the Border track.

Maps

I used the O'Reilly's guest house trail map, bought for a few dollars just before leaving. It's not highly detailed, but gives you enough information to complete the walk.

Route/Trail notes

Starting from across the road from the guesthouse, follow the Border track. The first hour is a highway, and you'll come across all sorts of hikers as the track starts as a grade 1 paved track. There are two tracks leading from the right of the border track to the Albert River Circuit, approximately 200 metres apart. They are both well signed so you can't miss them. From memory, they are about 5 kms into the border track.

We took the second exit and almost immediately the highway became a little goat track. The path is easily distinguishable and it should be almost impossible to get lost. The path is very muddy and intersected by numerous water flows, making the footing a bit unstable at times. I ended up in the mud a few times!

Eventually the rainforest starts thinning out and the track swung around to the right and began following the edge of the Valley of Echoes. The path becomes very narrow at points with quite a steep fall to the left, so watch your footing. There are a few spots to stop and appreciate the view all the way to the Pacific.

After a while there is an old school marker signifying 5 or 8 miles to O'Reilly's. Not too far past this is a sign for the Echo Point lookout. A quick jump on some rocks and it's a great place to sit and eat lunch.

Unfortunately, while we were there the weather turned for the worst, so we had to turn back without finishing the whole circuit as we weren't at the halfway point yet.

References

Take a Walk in South-East Queensland, p226, ISBN 9780957793170

GPS Tracks

Albert River Circuit (GPX)

Comments

Beautiful walk, camped at Echo Point, grab water from the last waterfall before the campsite! Sunrise at the lookout! Stunning!
Sonja Wentzel on 9 Oct, 2023

A beautiful circuit, narrow in places but the main challenge is the length. Stopped for lunch at Echo Point, very impressive views.

Still two trees down on the trail, one of which is large and at an awkward angle.
jgrun14 on 2 Oct, 2023

Lovely walk, track can be wet & slippery in places. Views from Echo point are great & heaps of waterfalls along the valley.
Bribie 61 on 8 Aug, 2023

Not busy, lush green all around. Especially the first half down to the falls (anti clockwise).
Wanderlust on 2 Jan, 2023

Beautiful walk, especially at the moment with the rain, the waterfalls are flowing well.
samkramer on 25 Sep, 2022

If you close your eye's and imagine the early morning crispness on your cheeks, hearing the early morning song's of a Whip Bird as you're greeted with a show and song from a Lyrebird as you feel the warmth from the first ray's of sunshine on your body as they gently filter down through the ancient old Antarctic Beech Tree's as you gradually descend deeper into the rainforest as the sound of waterfalls become louder 🪶🌳🐾
This is just a little of what it felt like to me hiking the Albert River Circuit yesterday 🐌🌄

All up we hiked just under 22km through some magnificent rainforest, beautiful creek crossings, waterfalls and a pretty spectacular view overlooking the low lying valley's of Northern NSW surrounding Mt Warning at Echo Point 👀

This one I would personally rate as moderate.
The track is easy to follow but does turn into a bit of a Billy Goat track in section's with rocks and exposed root's 🐐
The hike itself is nothing too strenuous just long in length 🥾

Definitely a beautiful hike to experience and I can only imagine how much more beautiful it will be after we get some rain ⛈

Whatever your adventures
Stay safe, have fun and enjoy the moments

🙏💕

Instagram:- misslissy79
Mel on 24 Sep, 2021

Lovely walk and lovely September weather to do it in. Walked anti-clockwise as suggested by the national park's trail notes and by the O'Reilly's staff and we think it's definitely the right direction to walk it, meeting all the waterfalls following the creek upwards towards it's source and saving the lookout and volcanic rim stretch till last, walking east towards the ocean.. :)

Amased at how many antarctic beech trees are still around in Lamington, you'll find them pretty much all along the circuit bit of this trail (after you branch off from the border track)..

Not many people on the trail but a BIG (>1.5m long) red-bellied black snake resting in the shade right on the trail at the 7km. Slowly slithered away after some heavy stomping in the ground at a distance..

Five star trek all in all!
Owie on 12 Sep, 2021

Long walk. The echo point lookout is really nice - a good spot to stop. The waterfalls and rainforest was much like other waterfalls and rainforest I’ve seen in many other places. If I were to do it again I’d probably just walk straight to echo point and back.
Juiced Pixels on 20 Jun, 2021

Beautiful walk. They did a lot of maintenance on the track. Not overgrown anymore and the fallen trees are removed.
Roelien on 5 Oct, 2020

Fabulous walk. Beautiful rainforest scenery. Saw three snakes. Narrowly missed out on seeing a dingo. Waterfalls and views were gorgeous. Long but not a hard walk. A good endurance walk.
Caroline on 3 Oct, 2020

Decided to give this one a go this morning from O’Reilly’s. Agree with earlier comments that the track is overgrown but recognizable. A few areas that had us questioning but was easily corrected. No ticks, leeches or snakes today but think this would change quickly with recent rain. We wore runners, but would definitely recommend boots and gaiters if there had been recent rain. There was almost no sun on this walk through the trees so the ground was quite wet in areas despite no rain in the past few days. Overall, a nice easy (as easy as 20+ km can be!) walk with some lovely views!
Kiara on 15 Sep, 2020

Probably the most lush walk I have done to date. Completed in just over 7hrs with heaps of breaks to look at/explore the creeks and waterfalls. The Echo Point Lookout was a very nice and unexpected surprise. The Albert Creek portion of the track gets pretty narrow and overgrown in some spots, had to jump some newly fallen trees too. A good one for anyone looking to work on longer hikes but haven't cracked that 20km distance yet.
jeabou on 5 Sep, 2020

This is the most amazing walk within lamington national park. So many waterfalls, the variations of greenery is magical. It’s a long walk but well worth it.
Kerri on 6 Jun, 2020

Great walk! took about 9 hours solo with plenty of photo stops along the way, i think if i hadnt stopped for photos it would be closer to 7 hours. Would definitley recommend bringing gaiters for the hike to prevent an cuts from the overgrown path and spare socks incase you slip into any of the creeks (which i sadly did). Would also recommend to bring a friend, did this one on my own today and had some super sketchy moments and close encounters with snakes! This is definitley one of my favourite walks now though, it was absoloutley beautiful.
Itonist584 on 25 Mar, 2020

Great walk and magnificent views from Echo Point
Mackamcb on 27 Dec, 2019

An easy 5km walk from O’Reilly’s to the start of the circuit. It took us about 4 hours, plus lunch and photo stops. The track is a bit overgrown in places, but it is easy to follow and well worth the effort.
John G on 21 Aug, 2019

We completed the walk in the anticlockwise direction stopping for the night at Echo Point campsite. Took the first exit off the boarder track (from O’Reily’s). The track was quite good and generally easy to follow. The track is basically downhill and eventually passes several waterfalls along the Albert river. There were about 5 trees that had fallen over the trail that took some time to negotiate. The walk in to Echo Point took us 4 hours and was actually 15km. The Lookout is another 160m from the campsite in the anti clockwise direction. The nearest drinking water was a stream about 5mins from the campsite in the clockwise direction (back toward the waterfalls). This was a small stream, but may not be there in drier weather (had rained about a week earlier). We walked out in the morning in the clockwise direction. This was about 8km, took 2hrs and was a slight uphill climb the whole way. There was no water available on this path. Great hike with great views from the lookout.
Maark Gee on 28 Apr, 2019

The lookouts have good views out to the Caldera, Mt Warning and the ocean and then the trail winding down the creek is beautiful.
When the trail follows the creek, it is a little different to other similar hikes in the area, in that the jungle was not so thick and close in places. So although you were in full shade from tall trees it felt open and bright near to the water.
I recommend wearing long clothing on this hike as I found it to have lots of small tree ferns and other spiky things overgrowing the trail and I got quite badly scratched up in my shorts and T shirt.
There are also several large trees down over the trail making it a bit awkward in places
Allan on 6 Apr, 2019

Great walk, beautiful falls. We camped overnight at Echo Point campsite - easy to find, ~160 m from Echo Point lookout in the direction of the falls. Very cold and windy that night but the view of the stars from Echo Point lookout was great, so were sunset and sunrise despite the sun not meeting the horizon within the view from the lookout.
Jess on 7 Jul, 2018

Took us about 6 hours and we clocked it at 22km. Lots of leeches today but honestly that was the only negative. We normally start our walks early like 6.30am I highly recommend that you be careful driving up the mountain at this time during winter. It was pitch black and foggy and nearly impossible to see. The walk itself was honestly amazing and my favourite so far. We got on the trail about 6.50am and started walking. Once we hit Albert River circuit we saw about 20 people the whole way around. We did the hike anticlockwise but most others were doing it the other way. It wasn’t a particularly hard walk and no uphill battles. There were cool creek crossings and lots of challenging obstacles on the way which we thought added to the charm. This is one we will do again. A really great walk
Belindak77 on 7 Jul, 2018