Remember the fuss and bother about building a road (the Bloomfield Track) through the Daintree rainforest back in the 80s? It was actually a plan to build a road that lasts, rather than the track that had been there since the 40s but was washed away many times, following the aborigines foot trail through to the northern end near Cooktown. There are some that frown upon the tree huggers of the world, but without them we would have lost many of our old growth forests such as areas like the Franklin River. But the Bloomfield Track was built anyway.

It is a beautiful way to travel through the rainforest and as there are no places to camp (or barely even stop) along the way on the 30km track, there is little opportunity to damage the forest. This is a stunning journey. The surface is good and the only reason you need 4WD is due to the steep hills. And they are steep. As we approach the first hill of any note, there is already a queue of about six vehicles waiting for a car and trailer that jack knifed on the ascent to be sorted out. This is a good time to have lunch! It took only about half an hour for at least 15 blokes to give their (15 different) opinions on how to right the trailer now sitting on its side half way up a hill with a 1 in 3 gradient. So much testosterone.

Towards the end of the track we stopped at Bloomfield Falls. It was a pretty impressive display even though it’s the (wet) dry season. I’d love to see it in March!

Bloomfield Falls

And before you know it, the rainforest is gone. We emerge on the northern end to blue sky (short lived) and stop at Black Mountain. This is an amazing sight. It looks like an enormous truck had tipped out an enormous amount of black rocks. But they are HUGE rocks. PS – they are actually brown, but they look black due to a lichen that grows on them.

Black Mountain