Mossman Gorge, Daintree National Park - Nature, culture and history
Natural environment
Daintree National Park is within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA). Proclaimed in 1988, the WTWHA extends for about 450km between Cooktown and Townsville. Consisting of nearly 900,000ha, vegetation is primarily tropical rainforest, but also includes open eucalypt forest, wetlands and mangrove forests. The WTWHA meets all four natural criteria for World Heritage listing. These criteria recognise the area’s exceptional natural beauty and the importance of its biological diversity and evolutionary history, including habitats for numerous threatened species. The WTWHA also has cultural significance for Aboriginal people who have traditional links with the area and its surrounds.
Find out more about the Wet Tropics Management Authority.
An ancient landscape
The landscape of Daintree National Park began to form about 400 million years ago under the sea, when Australia was still part of the great super-continent, Gondwana. Ancient rivers carried sediments to the coast, which was then situated more than 100km west of its present position.
Eventually, uplifting of these marine deposits, associated with the movement of the Earth’s crust, lifted a vast area of metamorphic and granite rock far above the sea levels of today. Subsequent erosion of the softer metamorphic rock has exposed the harder underlying granite and resulted in the dramatic, mountainous coastal ranges we see today.
For over 200 million years, successive climate changes have resulted in the contraction and expansion of rainforest throughout much of Australia. During the drier ice-ages, many plants and animals did not adapt to the new conditions and were driven to extinction. Within Daintree National Park and the surrounding area, however, cloudy, wet mountaintops and deep moist valleys provided refuges from these climatic fluctuations for many forms of life. Today, many plants and animals found throughout the park have undergone little evolutionary change from the ice-age survivors, which expanded from refuges millions of years ago.
Animals
The brilliant, metallic blue Ulysses butterfly is occasionally seen along the walking track from the car park. When in flight, the flashing blue of the flapping wings makes it easy to observe. The stunning black and green male Cairns birdwing butterfly may also be seen; the female, a dull brown colour, is Australia’s largest butterfly, with a wingspan of up to 150mm. At dusk, insectivorous birds such as white-rumped swiftlets and grey fantails can be observed catching insects over the calmer pools along the river.
In the river, jungle perch can be easily identified by two conspicuous black spots on their tail. If you are lucky, you may also see saw-shelled turtles and platypus in the quieter pools and calmer stretches.
Reptiles are often encountered along the walking tracks. Observant visitors may find a Boyd’s forest dragon clinging quietly to a tree in the lower parts of the forest. These lizards can be approached quite easily as they often stay very still in an attempt to remain undetected. Amethystine pythons, which may grow up to 8 metres in length, are occasionally seen along the circuit track. Although they are non-venomous and generally harmless, they should not be approached.
The spotted–tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus gracilis) is an endangered species found within the park. This cat-sized marsupial is one of Australia’s few purely carnivorous animals. Their range covers both upland and lowland rainforests and the tall eucalypt forests found on the western slopes of the Windsor and Carbine Tablelands.
Of all Australia’s rodents, the giant white-tailed rat (Uromys caudimaculatus) is one of the largest, with a body length of up to 380mm. Often regarded as a mischievous pest, it will boldly raid homes and camp sites, chewing its way into tents, food containers and even electrical wiring. This nocturnal creature is an efficient tree climber.
Although many mammals living in the park are nocturnal and therefore difficult to observe, you may be lucky to see a few creatures by day. The musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus) is often active during daytime and may be glimpsed foraging on the forest floor. This small creature looks similar to a bandicoot, but it is usually smaller with dark, chocolate brown fur. It is the most primitive member of the kangaroo family and is believed to have remained relatively unchanged over the last 20 million years.
The magnificent, buff-breasted paradise-kingfisher (Tanysiptera sylvia) returns from New Guinea during the warmer months to breed in north Queensland. It is easily recognisable by its beautiful blue back and wings, orange underside and very long white tail. Another bird that returns from New Guinea to breed each year is the pied imperial-pigeon (Ducula bicolor). These black and white pigeons arrive in large numbers around August to enjoy an abundance of fruits found in the lowland rainforest. Throughout the year, the ground dwelling orange-footed scrubfowl (Megapodius reinwardt) is commonly seen scratching for food on the forest floor and can sometimes be seen building one of their enormous nests, huge compost mounds of leaf litter and sticks, in which their eggs are incubated.
Plants
Daintree National Park has examples of the most primitive plants and animals in the world, representing major stages in the earth’s evolutionary history. For example, 13 of the world’s 19 primitive flowering plant families are found within the Daintree National Park, as well as the world’s most primitive pines, cycads, ferns and mosses. Many of these ancient plants provide an insight into the evolution of flowering plants, which began about 120 million years ago.
The structure and variety of plants in the rainforest are a result of competition between them. The fierce contest for light forces trees to grow skywards, their intermingling crowns shading the forest floor. In the dim conditions found on the forest floor only shade-tolerant plants such as ferns and palms are able to grow. The circuit track at Mossman Gorge is an excellent place to see the results of competition between plants.
Plants such as orchids and birds nest ferns try to avoid the competition for light altogether by starting life on the higher tree branches, their spores and seeds dispersed by wind and animals. Other plants simply hitchhike to the sunlight. Lawyer vine or wait-a-while uses numerous hooks to climb up a tree trunk, while other climbing plants reach the tree tops using hundreds of small roots or tendrils.
The strangler fig starts life high on a tree branch where its seed is deposited by birds or flying foxes. It then sends its roots downwards, gradually joining them together around the trunk of the host tree. Eventually, the host tree, constricted and starved, will die, leaving the magnificent fig standing on the forest floor. Along the walking track, there are some excellent examples of strangler fig trees.
Culture and history
Kuku Yalanji country
The Kuku Yalanji are the Traditional Owners of this area. Their traditional country extends from near Cooktown, south to Mossman and west to the Palmer River. For the Kuku Yalanji, many natural features of the landscape have spiritual significance including Wundu (Thornton Peak), Manjal dimbi (Mt Demi), Wurrumbu (The Bluff) and Kulki (Cape Tribulation).
A rich array of plants and animals provided reliable food sources for the Kuku Yalanji as they travelled seasonally throughout the area. The coastal lowlands were particularly productive and could sustain a relatively large population. Understanding the weather cycles and the combination of vegetation types allowed the Kuku Yalanji to find a variety of food throughout the year - when mat grass (jilngan) is in flower, it is time to collect the scrub fowl (jarruka) eggs and when blue ginger (jun jun) is fruiting, it is time to catch scrub turkey (diwan). Many tree-dwelling animals were also hunted including tree-kangaroos (mural), possums (yawa) and flying foxes.
European settlement
Gold miners, explorers, timber cutters and farmers have all made their mark on the area. In 1873, George Elphinstone Dalrymple led the first exploration deep into the Daintree River valley, naming the river after Richard Daintree, a prominent geologist and friend.
“The river valley is here surrounded by a panorama of great beauty…a perfect picture of rich tropical country…”
During the voyage, Dalrymple noted extensive areas of land suitable for agriculture but more importantly, he found huge stands of red cedar. Soon after, hordes of timber-getters arrived with the prospect of getting rich from “red gold”. At the time, these much-prized trees had almost disappeared from most southern forests and it was only 10 years before the Daintree suffered the same fate. Many settlers left disheartened but others stayed, determined to make a living by raising cattle or growing crops such as rice, vegetables, coffee, maize and sugar. While crops grew well on the river flats, flooding, pests, disease and the difficulty of getting to market made life very hard.
In the 1880s, farming expanded along the coastal belt, and extensive areas of lowland rainforest were cleared. Settlements were established throughout the area and the resident population began to grow.
In 1967, the Mossman Gorge Section of Daintree National Park was declared. In 1988, Daintree National Park was recognised internationally as a significant natural area with its inclusion in the WTWHA listing.<< Return to Mossman Gorge, Daintree National Park
Last updated: 02 February 2007
