For aeons the Old World rainforests of the Daintree have provided a vibrant, living cultural landscape for the indigenous inhabitants of the region. Much more recently the Daintree rainforest has been a source of fascination, conjecture and speculation for many of the world's most eminent natural history scientists. Sir Joseph Banks initiated scientific data collection of the coastal flora and fauna he encountered while travelling the eastern coast of Australia on HMS Endeavour in the 1770's. The accumulation of scientific knowledge continues today with a collaborative research and industry approach.  With greater understanding, a picture is unravelling of a vastly more interesting and incredibly more complex bio-region than scientists could have predicted. One that is likely to converge in significance with the sacred qualities known to the indigenous custodians of the Daintree, since time immemorial.

Knowing the rainforests of the Daintree in all their moods and seasons and the intricacies, complexities and interrelationships of their inhabitants is the major undertaking of Cooper Creek Wilderness. It is a task that far exceeds the capabilities of any single generation. Accordingly, material and opinions accumulated from a wide variety of sources are balanced against the direct experiences and observations of the inhabitants within the very heart of this inspirational ecosystem.

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Thornton reak – the refugial Epicentre of the Daintree Rainforest

Scientific speculation deviates dramatically from an indigenous Dreamtime and favours a geophysical beginning in the Devonian Era, some 350 million years ago. Australia was part of the southern super-continent Gondwana, which also contained the subcontinent of India and the now island fragments including New Zealand, New Caledonia and New Guinea and the continents now known as Antarctica (East Gondwana) and South America and Africa (West Gondwana. The landscape of the Daintree was uplifted from two kilometres beneath the ocean surface, approximately 150 kilometres east of the coastline of the time. Dramatic erosion fulfilled the intermediate channel and outlying continental shelf over the following 90 millions years, traversing the remainder of the Devonian, Carboniferous and the beginning of the Permian Ages.

Gondwana began its break-up about 120 million years ago. By the middle of the Cretaceous Age, some 115 million years ago, the landscape of the Daintree as we know it today was firmly established. The granite inselbergs of Thornton Peak and Pieter Botte dominated the heights above a narrow coastal plain. Harder granites resisted erosive episodes and a series of deeply dissected stream and creek systems laid down complex patterns of soil from various granitic and metamorphic materials onto the coastal lowlands.

For 70 million years Australia remained attached to Antarctica maintaining equable warmth and wetness through equatorial currents between the poles. Beginning about 50 million years ago, Australia detached in the final stage of the break-up and drifted northwards in isolation bringing irrevocable and profound changes to global climate with the development of circumpolar currents and the formation of the Antarctic ice cap.

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Old-growth Forest of Gondwanan Giants and Fan Palm Gallery

Extensive regional extinctions of species occurred as a result of global cooling and consequential aridity. However, the northward drift of Australia allowed the climate of its wet tropics to remain continuous with its Gondwanan origins. These remnant rainforests preserved during 35 million years of splendid isolation experienced incursions of fauna and flora following the collision of the Australian and Asian continental plates about 15 million years ago. The significance of this mixing is profound in that it mixed two evolutionary streams of flora and fauna, of likely common origin, which had been separated for at least 80 million years.

In the last period of the Tertiary Age, a series of glaciation events continued to as recently as 15,000 years ago. These Ice Ages, interspersed over nearly two million years, further diminished the Gondwanan rainforests of the time. North Queensland’s coincidental entry into the tropics brought refuge from glaciers but dry conditions promoted by these events brought fire. It was the refugial nature of the numerous steep, moist and protected valleys of the eastern fall of Thornton Peak, which allowed for a persistence of continuous survival of the closest modern day counterpart of the forests of Gondwana.

The outstanding natural values of the area have been recognised through a variety of protective initiatives including inscription within the World Heritage estate on the 9th December 1988 for that portion now formally the Daintree Cape Tribulation Section of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.

From a visitor’s perspective, the major portions of rainforest landscape viewed through the windows of the tour-bus are on freehold land. Private property bought in fee simple under Australia’s most absolute investment in land. Perhaps inconsistent with a national expectation, but reality, nevertheless. Whilst the majority is not, two percent of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area is also freehold land.

Cooper Creek Wilderness occupies a strategically significant portion of this two-percent within the middle reach of the celebrated Cooper Creek catchment. A number of tributary feeders to the major Cooper Creek channel have deposited a variety of soil types resulting in associated vegetation communities. Cooper Creek Wilderness encapsulates the majority of attributes of the greater Daintree including flora relicts, primitive animals, examples of ongoing evolution and speciation, rare and endemic flora and fauna and living links with recent past incursions of flora and fauna from south-east Asia.

Cassowary jpg    The rare and endangered Southern Cassowary

Cooper Creek Wilderness is also privately owned and therefore protected from the ravages of popular public access and bureaucratic inefficiencies, though certainly not immune. It supplies the very same environmental goods and services as neighbouring publicly-owned World Heritage estate, but visitor access and particularly commercial tourism may elect to pay either the full life-cycle costs to the former (as per user-pays) or virtually nothing at all, to the latter.

With the signing of the World Heritage Register, land that was designated “rural” and zoned for farming, lost its economic land use of primary production and left landholder with a dilemma – how to make a living out of rainforest.  Landholders were denied compensation claims on the grounds that “World Heritage will bring tourism and tourism will bring prosperity.”

Cooper Creek Wilderness, the Company, are land managers, firstly and tour operators by default.  Tourism, eco-tourism has become the means by which a small family conserves its World Heritage lands and presents its values to visitors from around the world.

We invite tourists who want to see the best of the Daintree Rainforest, who want an understanding of its ecological values and cultural values, who want a tour with a local expert with enthusiasm and expertise, and who want access to majestic old growth rainforest, to contact us through our web site http//:www.ccwild.com

With the establishment of this new website and its CCWILD Wiki, Cooper Creek Wildernesss will attempt to build a multifaceted knowledge-base, which will (hopefully) achieve an added dimension to Cooper Creek Wilderness’ presentation obligations, as defined within the World Heritage Convention. In order to transmit the values of conservation and protection of the Daintree Rainforests to future generations, it is essential that its wealth and diversity be brought to the attention of the current generation.

It also serves as a planning resource for ethical travellers, seeking access to the secret places of the world, which are by their very nature, so difficult to find. It is also hoped that the extraordinary potential of the Daintree to model an integrated approach of sustainable management through world’s best eco-tourism, is assisted by this knowledge base.

The eyes of the world are on the Daintree. Let us hope that they might see a model worthy of emulation for the undisputed benefits of all…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Prue Hewett is one of the directors of Cooper Creek Wilderness, a small family company that conserves a significant parcel of freehold land in the heart of the Daintree Lowlands. 

Funding for this project comes from eco-tourism and the Company has Advanced Eco-tourism Accreditation through Ecotourism Association of Australia.

We take visitors on guided interpreted walks and have packaged our tours with other products to allow visitors to the Daintree to see the best with a local expert and in small groups.

Knowing about the Daintree has become our business and our passion.  We have a blog and a wiki on our web site and welcome visits and comments.  URL http//:www.ccwild.com