On the tablelands the vast areas of rainforest provided large quantities of mill logs so timber getting and saw-milling flourished in a number of areas there as well as in Cairns. With few roads at the time much of the timber handled by the Cairns mills was floated down the Inlet and the Barron River. Bringing the rafts of timber across from Barron Heads to the Inlet was frequently a tricky business when the seas were rough and there were a good many sinkers in the raft. Sinkers were the logs that would not float by themselves but had to be dogged and chained between pine and pencil cedar logs that were naturally floaters. Kauri pine, red cedar and pencil cedar were the popular timbers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Oak was not in demand until well into the twentieth century. Even as late as the early 1930's oak was still being split into shingles and used for fowlhouses, outdoor toilets and even for fruit crates.

The North Queensland Timber Company, largely owned by Burns Philp & Co tried to cash in on the plentiful cedar supplies on the tablelands in the 1880's and 1890's. They had cutters operating over a wide area of the tablelands and had dumps of logs stacked beside every creek. Their scheme was to float the logs down the Barron and Mulgrave Rivers and pick them up for export down near the river mouths. In the Barron River they built a boom across the river near Kamerunga, and when the wet season came on the stacked logs were rolled into the river and floated down. Many are reported to have been broken to matchwood in coming down over the Barron Falls, but sufficient did get down reasonably whole to hit the boom and carry it away. Boom and logs were lost out to sea. As this method proved too costly for the entrepeneurs, logs were eventually carried to railheads for transport.

Bullock teams were the standard method of timber hauling and many splendid teams were operated by some outstanding bullock drivers. However the introduction of the cattle tick wiped out most of the teams and traction engines were introduced to take their place.