Be captivated by northern Queensland’s dazzling beauty on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of the tropics
Words Helen Werin ❚ Pictures Robin Weaver
Watch out for crocs,” our daughter, Sophie, warned as we entered the Daintree National Park. She wasn’t joking. This is the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area of north Queensland and there are crocodiles lurking in creeks and around beaches.
I scanned the waters and banks as we crossed the Daintree River on our drive towards Cape Tribulation, disappointed not to see one. A few weeks later I was very relieved not to have seen the owner of suspiciously croc-like prints as I walked alone on a beach. Talk about a sharp exit!
We were meeting Sophie and her boyfriend, Harry, in the world’s oldest rainforest, so I had expected crocs – and a whole lot more. We were to encounter snakes, swarms of flies under toilet lids and frogs under toilet rims.
Handspan-sized spiders lurked in the ladies, big bluebottle-type flies took many a nasty nip at my legs and an interesting assortment of bugs scuttled over my Kindle at night and over my bed. Forget the usual campsite hazards of tent pegs and trailing cables, several times I nearly trod on a wallaby’s ‘toes’ as it came looking for food.
Kookaburras laughed at us as we ate under peachy sunset skies. a bush stone-curlew, a most annoying bird, was far too often our early wake-up call. Parrots, possums and cheeky cockatoos, more bats than you can ever imagine, koalas and kangaroos, platypus and an animal that I’d never heard of, a pademelon; they all had starring roles in our great Queensland adventure.
We got our first bite of the dense rainforest at Emmagen Creek in the Daintree National Park, where thick rope-like vines twist around tree trunks. Mother Nature was at her best here.
This part of Queensland is a biological ark, a veritable Jurassic Park of plants from the age of dinosaurs. It’s impossible not to be awestruck by everything.
At Madja, we crossed seamlessly from mangrove to rainforest, all our senses heightened. At Jindalba we delved deep into lowland rainforest at the base of Mount Alexandra, crossing several creeks. Thornton Beach and Cow Bay are straight out of Bounty bar ads, edged by coconut palms with a backdrop of mountains. We breakfasted alongside Ellis Beach’s golden sands as we headed to Kuranda, an ‘arty’ village in the rainforest 300m above Cairns, Harry and Sophie wanting to visit Kuranda’s famous markets and
