Tully Basin

The main urban centre in the Tully Basin is the township of Tully, which is located inland and has a population of 2,436. Several localities, including Hull Heads, Tully Heads, and Mission Beach, are located on the coast.

The Tully Basin is steep in its upper areas which are primarily occupied by tropical rainforest and sclerophyll forests (largely in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area), while the coastal floodplain has largely been cleared and drained for agricultural purposes.

Streams emerge from the coastal mountain range with high velocities and volumes resulting from rainfall events.

Koombooloomba Dam is located in the upper catchment and is used for power generation.

Wetlands listed in the Directory of (Nationally) Important Wetlands include Tully River-Murray River floodplains, Edmund Kennedy Wetlands and Licuala Palm Forest.

The Tully Basin has an area of 1,685 km² and has a high proportion of natural/minimal use lands (75%). The remaining area is comprised of 12% sugarcane, 4% bananas, 5% grazing, 2% forestry, 1% other crops, 1% urban and 3% other land uses.

The Tully Basin grade has remained ‘good’ in 2022-23 and the score decreased from 72 to 71 since the previous year.

Key results

• The water quality grade for the Tully Basin remained ‘good’ with pesticides declining from ‘good’ to ‘moderate’, sediment, consisting of the total suspended solids (TSS), improving from ‘good’ to ‘very good’ and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) improving from ‘poor’ to ‘moderate’.  
• The habitat and hydrology index declined from ‘good’ to ‘moderate’ primarily due to a substantial decrease in score for the flow indicator which declined from ‘very good’ to ‘good’.

The diagram below shows the detailed results for each indicator by year. Click on the timeslider to see data from previous years.