Dalliance in the Daintree

Daintree Rainforest is a breath of fresh air, literally, covering more than 1200sqkm in tropical North Queensland, 90 minutes drive from Cairns.

I’m here on a whirlwind visit with Polestar, the road trip in a Polestar 3 pitched as “the SUV that drives like a sport car” (full report in West Wheels) to spend the night at Silky Oaks Lodge just outside Mossman.

The trip from Cairns is a dream, winding along the coast overlooking the Coral Sea.

It feels like I can almost put my hand out and touch the water, it’s so close, and, right on cue, Coldplay’s Paradise comes up on the playlist.

Life doesn’t get much better than this.

April to November is dry season with average daytime temperatures around 27C; nights average 19C.

“Caution. Falling coconuts”, a sign reads at a rest stop.

Silky Oaks Lodge, part of the Baillie Lodges group, has had an architectural redesign in the past few years as part of a $20 million refurbishment with custom furniture that includes king beds and commissioned artworks.

Set along the banks of the Mossman River, adjacent to the rainforest, it has a main lodge and 40 luxury treehouse-style guest suites, all with verandas, hammocks, and names drawn from local fauna.

I’m staying in the “Green Frog”, which is $2250 a night and includes a private deck with an outdoor bathtub and open-air shower.

Oh, there’s no TV, which I don’t notice till someone points it out — and that’s the whole point of it because there’s a lot more to life than staring at moving pictures on a screen in a room when you consider the rainforest is anywhere between 130 million and 180 million years old.

Older, even, than the Amazon.

Breathe.

This is as pure as it gets.

Sir David Attenborough famously described it as “the most extraordinary place on Earth”.

Pricing is “dynamic”, changing with season and demand, but accommodation is all-inclusive, so you get breakfast, evening drinks and canapes, a four-course dinner menu with matched wines, fully stocked mini-bar that’s replenished daily, access to the Fig Tree Rapid trails, morning yoga and one return set-schedule shuttle to Port Douglas per day.

Food is delicious, the menu curated by executive chef Mark Godbeer, and the kitchen garden you can walk through reveals a very short plant-to-plate journey.

Rustle, rustle . . .

I’m having a steamy soak at midnight and there’s a creature in the forest.

No, it’s not a crocodile, they’re in the mangroves, but more likely a wallaby or scrub fowl.

Either way, I’m too relaxed to care.

It’s been a busy day, taking in a drift-hike on a “river sled” — basically an industrial-strength li-lo — along the Mossman River with Back Country Bliss Adventures, which runs guided tours just downstream from the lodge.

Putting on wetsuits and dive boots, my group is assured it’s too high, too cool and too clear for crocs.

But the rainforest is full of other dangers, our guide drawing everyone’s attention to the stinging tree menacingly close to the water as we trek along river channels to the starting point.

Otherwise known as gympie-gympie, a name from the Kabi Kabi people of south-eastern Queensland, it’s part of the Urticaceae family that takes in the common prickly nettle found in Europe and North America, and has the dubious honour of being, arguably, the most painful plant in the world.

The sting is in its fine, needle-like hairs, which contain a neurotoxin similar to that of a spider, scorpion or cone snail — and the effect, if touched, can last for days, weeks, months and, in some instances, years, according to our guide.

I ask if it has medicinal properties.

Apparently, yes, and these are being studied, including the plant’s anti-inflammatory properties and its potential for developing a non-opioid painkiller without harmful side effects.

Finally, we get to drift.

It’s a bit of a balancing act, steering clear of granite boulders and tree roots.

Just when I think I’ve got the hang of it, splash.

I’m totally soaked as the guide tells us about the river’s sacred role in Aboriginal Dreamtime.

To think the rainforest was logged, cleared or converted to crops and pasture for more than 100 years of European colonisation till Daintree National Park was declared in 1981 and amalgamated into the UNESCO-listed World Heritage site Wet Tropics of Queensland in 1988.

“If it wasn’t for all that, we’d have sugarcane right up to the riverbank,” the guide says.

It’s growing just across the track we walk on, but producers have been doing it tough with the closure of the Mossman Sugar Mill in 2024, which means they need to truck their sugarcane 100km to Mulgrave Central Mill in Gordonvale.

“We have to respect our past, so let’s turn the Mossman mill into a museum,” the guide suggests.

Getting there

The Daintree Rainforest is about 120km north of Cairns along Captain Cook Highway.

Allow a leisurely two to three hours with stops at beaches along the way, including Palm Cove, or make it a day and drop into Port Douglas.

The drive offers some of the most stunning scenery in the world — but there may be roadworks, so be prepared for delays.

If you’re heading to the northern part of the Daintree Rainforest (north of the Daintree River), including Cape Tribulation, you’ll need to use the car ferry, which operates daily.

fact file

+ Daintree Rainforest is part of the 1988 UNESCO-listed World Heritage site Wet Tropics of Queensland, which stretches along the north-east coast of Australia for 450km between Townsville and Cooktown.

+ UNESCO recognises the Wet Tropics as being of “outstanding universal value”, noting there are some 894,420ha of mostly tropical rainforest that “presents an unparalleled record of the ecological and evolutionary processes that shaped the flora and fauna of Australia”.

+ The Wet Tropics is listed as the second-most irreplaceable natural World Heritage site on Earth by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

+ In 2021 the Queensland Government handed back 160,213ha of Wet Tropics land to Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation on behalf of traditional owners, the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. About 20 per cent of the land was in addition to that covered by Eastern Kuku Yalanji native title and includes the transfer of the Daintree, Ngalba Bulal (Cedar Bay), Black Mountain and Hope Islands national parks to Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land, marking the first time a UNESCO World Heritage area would be jointly run by traditional owners and a State government.