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About your host Matthew Wilson
I first came to the Daintree the year after I left School. I was
hitch-hiking around Australia with a friend and we heard about a
whole crowd of hippies living in the forest at Cape Trib so we hitched
a ride in an old Landrover - 7 hours from the ferry to C.T. through
muddy swamps and along a perilously narrow dirt track across the
Range. There were probably 100+ people living on little sleeping
platforms in trees and rough humpies, fishing, hanging out on the
beach and generally living an idyllic, hassle-free life. This was
the mid '70's. We stayed a week, soaked up the sun then kept on
our way to Darwin and beyond.
The next time I came to the Daintree was in 1988. I was on my way
to the Amazon via Darwin, Micronesia and Japan - to earn some money
teaching English. I had hitched up the East Coast from Adelaide
(my home town) and decided to visit friends who lived in Port Douglas
on my way to the Northern Territory. While staying at their place
for a few days I had the brilliant idea of borrowing their car and
making a day trip once more to Cape tribulation, just to see if
it had really changed.
It had, of course, but not that much. The road was still dirt, it
was still very rough and there were still numerous creek crossings
up to a metre deep. It was a slow trip from the ferry and got a
lot slower when it started raining heavily. I decided to take a
break at Crocodylus Village (a backpackers at Cow Bay, 30 km before
Cape Tribulation) and that's where I ended up staying 3 days and
nights once the rain intensified, the creeks and bridges flooded
and the road over the range was closed due to fallen trees.
It was during this time that I met a local guy who was trying to
make a few dollars selling rainforest blocks of land. He was a pretty
ethical kind of guy so he wasn't doing all that well. He, like most
of the other locals, used to hang out at Crocodylus quite a bit
as it was one of only two places in the district where you could
get a beer and meet up with people. Over the three days I stayed
there he convinced me it was my social responsibility as a conservation-minded
Australian to give up my plan of going to the Amazon and to buy
(and protect) a piece of Australian lowland tropical rainforest
instead. He was very persuasive and by the end of my enforced 3-day
stay I had signed up for a block, spent every last cent I had and
taken out a loan for the rest. I ended up working at Crocodylus
for a few years and, ultimately, building my own place (the Epiphyte
B & B) in this little piece of Paradise. I now live here with a
variety of native animals, my daughters Gaia and T'ai (half the
week) and a selection of couches, hammocks and deckchairs. There
are also lawnmowers, brushcutters, paintbrushes and gardening equipment.
There's much more to the story of course but if you want to hear
it, you're going to have to book in for a couple of days at least
- And be prepared to share your own stories!
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