We come at 9:15 for the lodge’s continental brekkie so we completely fail to understand why no one seems concerned that tables are dirty and there’s no bread to be toasted and lukewarm coffee in the carafe. We later learn it’s because breakfast ended at 9:00. Despite that, the friendly staff marshall some provinder for us and we depart for the Jungle Surfing zip line a half hour down the road that we’re getting to know very well indeed.

The friendly guides belt and buckle our butts into tight harnesses and put Cynthia and me in a large hamster wheel that we must plod in to hoist the first two guides to the platform on the first tree canopy. The father and son of another family run the round treadmill to hoist Cynthia and me to the platform … and so on until the seven of us surfers are on the platform with three guides.

We are in the clerestory of the rain forest, which we’re told is approximately 250 million years old, mostly never logged — one side of the wide stream rushing 100 feet beneath us was logged 50 years ago but the other side never — and both sides are as dense and moist as could be on this somewhat sunny day. (We have had three days of wonderful sunny skies in this place of perpetual rain, so we are just as lucky as all get out.)

The guides are very conscientious about hooking and unhooking our three carabiners as we surf from one platform to another. They cater to our fears by saying, “Scott’s being very careful because it’s his first day back on the platform after he lost that kid last week.” They tell us a bit about the various epiphytes and other rain forest growths we see, but we found much better information on signs at various museums and centers we’ve previously visited. Mt. Sorrow looms above us and the penultimate zip, which you can elect to do upside down the whole way, is a lot of fun. Even Cynthia does it. The final zip is a side-by-side race and David wins. The prize is a back rub, which is still — we’re writing this about a week later — forthcoming. (Reason for delay: NO wifi or internet in various places.)

We have a quick and absolutely fabulous BLT and chips at the Turtle Rock Café and then drive to the Marrdja boardwalk: another tramp through prehistoric foliage with swamps of four different kinds of mangrove all around us. Each has a different root system: Some hanging from above, others coiled like snakes and erupting through the muddy surface below. Just before we finish the 45-minute walk, we find a pile of cassowary turd on the boardwalk. There is a type of tree whose name we forget that has not figured out how to replicate itself by dropping its seeds (only a five percent chance). But if the seed is eaten and “processed” by a cassowary, the chances of successful germination soar to 95 percent.

We drive further down the road to take a boat ride on Cooper’s Creek for crock hunting with a curmudgeon who does find four crocks but two are so tiny that he tells us they will die within a day or so, eaten by fish or birds or other crocodiles. One, however, a female, slithers around in a narrow stream that lets into the wide creek. The creek: Think Humphrey Bogart trying to rescue his gin as Katherine Hepburn dumps it over the side in the African Queen.

We motor to the Daintree Discovery Center, where we climb the 145-foot tower, which puts us even higher above the rain forest canopy than the zip line did, but we’re so tired at the end of the day that we leave just before the five o’clock closing bell and return to our lodge for a quick G&T before we drive on for dinner at the Lync Haven Café Restaurant where the owners have rescue birds. The birds have open cages but put themselves to bed at night. Before closing the shop their cages are moved inside so that snakes cannot reach them. Apart from Lync Haven’s two owners, there are two staff: young women from Indianapolis who are acquiring their one-year work permits as they spend three months of their “service” in a remote location.

Another exciting and exhausting day in Oz.