Cape Tribulation
Isolated beaches bordered by dense jungle are common in the Daintree National Forest / Cape Tribulation area.

Jungle juiced

Daintree National Park offers an engaging look at Northeast Australia's lushest terrain

Primordial is a word that comes to mind when first encountering Daintree National Park, located between Cairns and Cooktown in tropical northeastern Australia.

Daintree is the heart of Queensland's Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, the largest tract of tropical rainforest surviving on the continent.

Ferry landing
The road ends and ferry transportation takes over
at the Daintree River.

This is a coastal mountain region where clouds often shroud vegetation-choked summits. Annual precipitation averages more than 120 inches, a deluge that makes possible a dense arboreal canopy, beneath which is found an amazing diversity of flora and fauna thrives.

The region harbors most of Australia's bat species, half the continent's bird species, a third of its mammals and a quarter of its frog, reptile and rodent species. The dense vegetation includes palms, cycads, ferns, vines, mosses, lichens, orchids and fungi. Many varieties exist nowhere else.

Roads are scarce and people scarcer. The coastal highway comes to an abrupt halt at the Daintree River, where a ferry keeps vehicles moving in lieu of a bridge.

Along the way, there are sporadic sugarcane fields supplanting the lowland rainforest, which reveal stately egrets and royal spoonbills stopping to feed.

Macleay's honeyeaterA Macleay's honeyeater, one of Daintree's many bird species.

The presence of agriculture irks environmentalists struggling to protect Daintree. "We have already cleared over 75 percent of our rainforest," one activist, David Armbrust, observed, noting that the remaining patches are full of endangered species.

Armbrust gets the word out with his Australian Natural History Safari, very civilized guided outings into the forest, and tries to reverse the damage with his Thylogale Nature Refuge, a 20-year attempt to restore rainforest in an area used for raising cattle about 50 years ago. He is letting "the natural regenerative process take place."

Here one finds red-legged pademelons, small marsupials that look like miniature wallabies, and Macleay's honeyeaters, tiny mottled birds.

 

Daintree treeA ribbon tree maintains the shape of a tree it enveloped that has long since died and disintegrated.

Picking out animals in the gloom under the dense rainforest canopy is difficult at best, even with binoculars. Bar-shouldered doves have a distinctive call but are virtually impossible to locate. Ringtail possums are easier, hanging by their tails from trees. Spotted catbirds? They're out there somewhere.

Under the canopy light dapples the ground and the atmosphere cooler and more humid than in the harsh sunshine.

The air smells dank with the aroma of composting vegetation. Cicadas buzz. A cockatoo calls out. Only giant spiders sit in huge webs.

Musky rat-kangaroos found in these parts are scarcely a foot tall and ambulate on all four legs. Scientists believe they may represent an evolutionary link between possums and kangaroos.

Wait a while treeThe wait-a-while tree propagates by sending out thin creepers covered with barbs capable of clinging to anything they encounter - including inattentive humans.

Inland from Daintree is the Great Dividing Range, dominated by Mount Lewis, a 4,000-foot peak. Here, the upland vegetation grows cloud-forest thick with huge ferns and dense mosses.

Australia is an immense arid continent that dried out about 25 million years ago, confining its rainforests to small pockets until about 10,000 years ago when moisture levels rose some and allowed the rainforests to expand again.

Copyright Gary Olson 2010 First published in The Arizona Republic