White Rock, a residential suburb on the outskirts of Cairns, is 10 km south of the city centre. It is on the Bruce Highway and the North Coast railway line, and is immediately north of Edmonton. It was named after White Rock Peak (574 m) in the Freshwater Creek State Forest, 2.5 km to the west of the Bruce Highway.
Several watercourses run down from White Rock Peak, ending in wetlands on the east of the suburb. The highway and the railway follow the high ground on the west of White Rock.
In the late 1960s White Rock had scattered development along the east side of the railway line, and by the mid-1970s a small estate had developed in the north, next to the Cairns golf club and the White Rock caravan park. The estate filled up in the early 1980s, and new subdivisions occurred to the south, along the railway line, a campus of the Trinity Anglican School opened in 1983, and a State primary school opened in 1988.
There are local shops in Progress Road near Trinity school, and a shopping plaza in Barnard Drive (supermarket and 20 shops) opened in 2001. White Rock's census populations have been:
| Census Date | Population |
|---|---|
| 1921 | 53 |
| 1971 | 281 |
| 1976 | 718 |
| 1986 | 1950 |
| 1991 | 3542 |
| 2006 | 3873 |
| 2011 | 4490 |
