On a 4WD adventure along the Bloomfield Track in Queensland, Christopher Somerville finds that the tropics of Australia are as spectacular and diverse as they are vast.
The black-tipped reef shark came skittering through the shallows on the end of my line. "Strike, Dad!" urged George, but I was too late. A twitch, a sudden slackness, and the little fish went zooming off among the mangrove roots.
"Should have got into him a lot earlier, Dad," George advised, bringing to bear his five years' experience as a resident of North Queensland. My wife Jane had no better luck with her couple of casts, but neither of us cared. Here on this fabulously beautiful, nameless beach, halfway up the rough old Bloomfield Track between Cairns and Cooktown, we were more than content to watch the jade-green Coral Sea and rejoice in being reunited with our son once more.
A good tarred road runs north into the outback of the Cape York Peninsula through scrubby bush and parched cattle country, but we had opted for the excitements of the Bloomfield Track's steep stony slopes and splashing crossings of crocodile-rich rivers, a wild ride through the tropical rainforest along the Queensland coast. We spotted a cassowary skulking among the trees, several wallabies and a pair of crocs flat out on the muddy banks of the Daintree River before we got to the Lion's Den, a rare old roadside pub of corrugated tin. A cold beer apiece for the three of us, before rattling up a track to the rainforest retreat of Mungumby Lodge.
The North Queensland Outback is uncompromising country but oases like Mungumby help cushion the trip - simple but comfortable chalets among the trees, main building with a huge veranda where we ate melt-in-the-mouth steaks while geckos ticked and scurried on the walls, and an early-morning bath at Hidden Falls in the forest.
