The Great Barrier Reef starts at its far northern end around Bramble Cay in Torres Strait, just south of Papua New Guinea and off the tip of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia.

Quick Scoop: Where It Starts

  • The reef’s northernmost point is marked by Bramble Cay, a tiny sandy cay at the edge of Torres Strait.
  • This area sits just off Cape York Peninsula, at the very top of Queensland’s east coast.
  • From there, the reef stretches thousands of kilometres down the coast toward Bundaberg and Lady Elliot Island in the south.

How People Usually Describe It

Many guides and travel sites describe the reef as:

  • Beginning “north of the tip of Cape York” and running down most of Queensland’s coast.
  • Extending from Torres Strait in the north to waters just south of Bundaberg in the south.

So if someone asks “where does the Great Barrier Reef start?”, the concise, geography‑style answer is: near Bramble Cay in Torres Strait, just off the northern tip of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.