Cataract Gorge and World Record Chairlift

You can ride world record holding chairlift hiding just minutes from an Australian city centre.

This is Cataract Gorge, Tasmania.

And it gets stranger the deeper you go.

Flying above the First Basin is the world’s longest single-span chairlift — stretching roughly 308 metres between its central towers.

But look underneath it…

There’s a swimming pool sitting right inside the Gorge.

And when the South Esk River floods?

This peaceful playground can completely change — floodwaters have even inundated the pool itself.

Keep walking…

and you might find peacocks casually roaming the gardens alongside wallabies and other wildlife.

Then disappear farther into the Gorge…

and you’ll reach Duck Reach Power Station.

Completed in 1895, it was Australia’s first publicly owned hydroelectric power station — helping power Launceston more than a century ago.

And even the water hides a mystery.

For decades, locals told stories that the First Basin was hundreds of metres deep… or even bottomless.

Scientists eventually mapped it.

The truth?

Its deepest point is only around 20 metres.

World record.
Floods.
Peacocks.
Hydropower.
And an old local mystery…

all hidden almost on the doorstep of Launceston.