We leave Port Douglas late after enjoying our wonderful suite, planning our next few days and having lunch. We pass through miles of tall green sugar cane on both sides of the Captain Cook Highway until we reach a ferry that is the only way, other than air, to cross the Daintree River to head north. A sign at the ferry tells us not to get out of the car because crocodiles inhabit the water and roam the land. They have killed unwary or disbelieving tourists. Once across, we are soon within the boundary of Daintree National Park, which is the rainiest place in Oz; it gets a bit more than eight meters of rain annually. Eight meters! (We are hoping for as little of this record-setting stuff as possible because everything we have come to Queensland to see and do is outside.
As we enter the final stretch of our drive under a road dark and mottled under late afternoon clouds and a heavy canopy of trees and ferns and bushes and vines, we notice new road signs — those yellow, diamond-shaped signs with simple warnings in black letters. We have transitioned in 70 years from many places and states, including the mundane to the metaphysical, but we never expected to transition in a single day from Kangaroo Crossing Warnings to Cassowary Walk Signs. It is a metaphor of our trip in a way: that we are growing in age to seek the unusual and accept the unexpected with delight.
We purposely motor past our night’s accommodation to stroll on the Jindalba boardwalk near the Daintree Rain Forest Discovery Center. It’s a 45-minute amble through a 250 million year old forest. No description possible … you’ll have to see the pictures to appreciate the prehistoric-ness of it. Even the remotest, wildest reaches of New Zealand and Tasmania seem a bit trimmed and lacking in variety in comparison.
We check in at Heritage Lodge and Spa, which has no spa and no wi-if in the rooms, but will allow us to connect in the restaurant to a roaming service for $4.50 per 100 kilobyte. We also are told there is a TV in our cabin (number 7) but no reception; it has a built-in DVD player and the restaurant has two tall bookshelves full of movies that a former guest airmailed to them after staying there. Sadly, like the Grand Pacific Hotel in Lorne, this is a special place created with vision that has seen better days. But it has a ragged charm and it is undeniably remote and in the center of a rain forest.
We clean up and have dinner at the hotel’s entirely open air restaurant, sitting at a black-clothed table just above a rushing stream, lit by a gas lantern. Dinner includes includes a free bottle of wine — red or white our choice. Cynthia takes the 2017 Wolfgang Blass Eaglehawk Sauvignon Blanc from South Australia, whose label, among other tidbits, tells us the wine is “produced with the aid of egg and milk products.” Important to vegans and those who like their whites clarified, but it’s the first time we have seen such information on a bottle itself.
Another day in the Jurassic Park that is Oz.
Two Tramps 