Cooper Creek in the Daintree

We headed up to Cooper Creek in the Daintree Forest on Wednesday for a 3 night stay at a unique property that David and Ro have a share in (since way back in the late 70s). The property borders the beautiful, pristine Cooper Creek and the World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest. We knew it was going to be a pretty special experience!

The Cooper Creek Wilderness area is about 90klms north of Smithfield. We broke the trip up with a coffee stop at the amazing Thala Beach Nature Reserve Resort, just south of Port Douglas and a (tropical) fruit stop at Scomazzons Roadside Stall a few klm north of Mossman.

We were so impressed with the Balinese style Thala Resort (though not with their coffee) that we made a booking for lunch at the end of our trip on Saturday!

It had views to die for at the Thala Resort!

The only way to cross the Daintree River is by the small pulley driven car ferry ....

David and Ro's property is on a rough private road/track off the main highway up to Cape Tribulation - the track included a (shallow) creek crossing.

Their property is kept cleared, except for around 140 mangosteen trees, and there are a number of dwellings, although only two of them are habitable at the moment. The dwellings are spread all over the property, out of sight of each other. Rainforest fringes all the cleared areas and provides a beautiful backdrop of soaring trees and the constant sounds of bird.

This is Ro's cabin at Cooper Creek .........

The view from her balcony(with our hire car) .....

And her beautiful shed .... this is the shed that Ro built herself - the wonder woman she is. It's now having to accommodate some of David's passion projects too seeing he's (more or less) moved backed to FNQ! 

This is the house David built when he first moved to Cooper Creek 40 odd years ago (daughter Thea spent her childhood here). It's now used for storing some machinery but you can see it had beautiful Japanese style architectural "bones" in its day.

Cooper Creek provides a blue tinted, perfectly formed swimming hole only a few minutes walk through the rainforest next to Ro's cabin. we cooled off in this pool a few times, marvelling at all the fish swimming around us in the pristine water. We even had a close up Cassowary sighting on the edge of this pool on our first afternoon's visit.

We're definitely in the tropics - there's insects and rampant foliage everywhere. We're lucky Ro keeps the cabin carefully screened!

Ro's cabin has a rainwater tank supply, a composting toilet, a gas fired stove and one (solar) power source (no phone, no internet) - all pretty simple really - but very comfortable. We were amazed to see them preparing a full (pork) roast dinner for us on our first night in these simple surroundings!

Served on the balcony in the absolute stillness of a Daintree evening - complete with candlelight!