Australia.

The great continent on the southern edge of the world. The mention of the name brings to mind scorched red earth that stretches to the shimmering horizon and well beyond. Weird and wonderful lifeforms, well adapted to the crushing heat and sapping desert dryness, wandering, hopping, and slithering across the landscape. Where the desert subsides, eucalyptus sprouts, their distinctive summer smell pervading the air for miles — a result of the sun warming oils in their leaves. The edge of the continent is fringed by some of the most abundant oceans on the planet and home to the Great Barrier Reef.

Few people tend to know, however, that there are regions of Australia where rainforests grow thick and verdant and the blistering outback is only a distant memory. Amongst these is something that you would least expect from Australia — at least on first glance.

To reach this fascinating region you must drive north from Cairns, along the ocean with the Great Barrier Reef beckoning to your right to an area known, fittingly, as the Wet Tropics. About a 100 kilometres into your journey you will come across your destination — the stunning Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest on Planet Earth.

This incredible rainforest, the largest contiguous region in Australia, predates the Amazon Rainforest of South America by about 10 million years, having existed for 180 million years. It is not inconceivable to think that, as you make your way through the greenery, millions and millions of years ago, dinosaurs might have picked the same path through this forest.

How do we know that the Daintree Rainforest has been around for so long? Well, there are a few clues that scientists have used to determine its age — foremost among which is that the rainforest still preserves some of Earth’s stages of major evolutionary history. Some of the earliest known land plants such as whisk ferns and tassel ferns are found here, not to mention 7 families of ancient true ferns. Some of the plants, such as the Idiot Fruit Tree Idiospermum australiense (I’m not making this up, I swear!) and the Daintree Pine (Gymnostoma australianum) are known as ‘green dinosaurs’, relics of Gondwana, the supercontinent that existed 180 million years ago. Another compatriot of the dinosaurs are the cycads, ancient palm-like plants that are considered living fossils.

The region is also home to some of Australia’s most rare and elusive animals, some of which evidence the rainforest’s age as well. One of the most important denizens of the Daintree Rainforest is the Southern cassowary, a large, flightless bird with a distinctive casque or helmet atop its head. These rather fiesty birds are native to Australia and the southern subspecies is found primarily within the Daintree’s shady depths. In fact, so rich and diverse is the rainforest’s bird specie that is it declared an Important Bird Area (IBA), along with some adjoining regions of forest.

So, if you ever find yourself in Australia and looking to escape into what is effectively ‘Jurassic Park’, head over to Far North Queensland and take a wander around the Daintree Rainforest.

It’s definitely worth your while.