Rainforest Meets the Reef

I could bore you for ages with facts about the Daintree section of the Australian rainforest but it's somehow not as photogenic as the turquoise of the ocean so I'll stick with the main points again.

Right, well it's the oldest continually surviving rainforest in the world and it's more than 100 million years old, which means it's like stepping back into the past and looking at what the earth might have looked like at the time. Dinosaurs used to live here - ecologists and botanists and other beardy-type people love it.

The rainforest covered much more of Australia than just this Daintree section but then the climate changed and much of it receeded to the parts of the continent that were warmer and more humid, which explains why you won't find trees like this in Sydney.

Have I mentioned that Sydney is bloody cold in the winter?

It's been on the world-heritage protection list since 1988, along with it's neighbour the great barrier reef, which means both are national parks and both have strict rules about what you can and can't do, things like you can't take anything away and you're not supposed to destroy anything. This doesn't extend to the chocolate pudding fruit, which you are welcome to take away if you can smuggle it past customs at Sydney airport without them thinking you've got a fruity-shaped bomb in your suitcase.

You can drive through the Daintree on a sealed road as far as Cape Tribulation but then it's dirt track all the way to Cooktown. Beyond that I don't know. Perhaps it's donkey or nothing.

Anyway, the forest is so dense that it's a bugger to photograph and you can't just wander into it either. These are a couple of shots I took while we were driving through but they don't really do justice to the heights and depths and the sight of all those ferns and palms when the sun sneaks through the canopies. They've built the occasional boardwalk and a visitor's centre so you can get closer, but I'm boycotting on account of it reminding me of something you'd find in Delamere Forest, and seeing as I'm in Australia then no, I don't want a Magnum and a Diet Coke while I'm admiring the view, but thanks.

Is a rainforest the same as a jungle? We've been debating this and Darren thinks it is but I think a jungle has monkeys in it, you know, like in Jungle Book. He looks at me like he thinks I'm an idiot. I know I'm not likely to run into a singing bear but I genuinely don't know what the difference is.

Ooh-hoo, I wanna be like you-hoo......