Jungle Canopy Surfing - Daintree

Travellers Tales
Friday, June 06, 2008

So far I have experienced World Heritage-listed rainforests both from underneath and at their coastal edges. Now, after leaving behind the sugar cane plantations north of Mossman and crossing the Daintree River, it feels as if I am travelling through their midst.

As the narrow road twists and curls toward Cape Tribulation, the jungle seems to bear down upon it, giant ferns and screw palms creating a tunnel around it. With an ethereal mist suffusing the trees, lit by glimmers of sunshine, and with choral music playing on the car stereo it is one of the most uplifting drives of my life.

Before I know it I have arrived at Cape Tribulation and am being strapped into a harness for an afternoon of surfing through the jungle canopy on flying foxes. I can already tell from the banter between the guides and my group of mostly young women that this is going to be fun.

Then I am handed my helmet, which has the name "Monkey" inscribed upon it. I might have spent the morning with Lara Croft but, according to their headgear, my companions this afternoon are even bigger cinematic legends such as Tarzan, Princess Leia and, erm, Tinkerbell.

In common with drift snorkelling, this tour melds excitement with education and the guides are careful to pass on information about the 135-million-year-old rainforest we are flying through while also safely scaring the living daylights out of us.

The canopy tour runs on a system of flying fox ziplines linking fi ve tree platforms, the highest of which reaches nearly 20 metres off the ground. Guides do all the hard work propelling jungle surfers along using a rope pulley system, allowing you to enjoy the wide-ranging views across the forest canopy and out towards the Great Barrier Reef.

We begin by travelling in pairs along two spans, with my buddy being a Canadian Tinkerbell. One by one we are secured to the zipline and then coaxed to step off the platform into thin air. Then, trying not to look down, we are hauled along the line to the next platform.

The next span is the longest one at 78 metres, rendered even more heart-stopping when we are left to dangle at the run's highest point, 22.5 metres above Mason Creek. Even with Tinkerbell for company it is unnerving.

Then I travel solo, firstly at speed down a 45-metre stretch and fi nally, living up to my "Monkey" epithet, hanging cross-legged and upside down. Later that evening, after an alfresco dinner serenaded by warbling tree frogs back at the Cape Tribulation Resort and Spa, I add another perspective on the world's oldest continually surviving rainforest by doing a night walk.

It is an eerie experience strolling in the dark through a place ancient enough to have seen the dinosaurs come and go. I pass between giant trees that have been here since before Captain Cook sailed past in 1770.

At night, however, the rainforest also becomes a discernibly living entity, under the cover of darkness allowing a number of nocturnal species such as possums, bandicoots and platypuses to thrive. Tonight, we spot a spindly python hunting for food, a few forest dragon lizards and numerous frogs.

It is the sounds of the jungle that are most apparent: the hum of insects, the whoop of birds, the glug of gently flowing creeks and the crackle of leaves and branches moving in the evening breeze.

Back at my cabin in the resort after a long, varied day exploring the rainforest it is this soothing soundtrack that ushers me to sleep.