I'm glad to report that the rainforest around the Daintree River has not only been given National Park status, but that when somebody proposed that a major coastal road should be ploughed through the area, World Heritage put their foot down and slapped a conservation order on it. Red tape being what it is, however, the foot didn't fall quite quick enough to prevent the coastal road going ahead, at least in part. Today, it is possible to stay at places such as the wonderfully remote Crocodylus YHA Lodge in the middle of the forest, and take a few days out from the big city to get back to nature. Some would say that, at the rate we're going, our children's children will be asking us what a tree looks like, so get back to nature while you can (1).

The accommodation at the Crocodylus is made up of basic, hostel style dorms sleeping 14 people per room. The rooms themselves are nothing more than big tents in the middle of the rainforest with mosquito netting around the outside, but that's great because it means that I am able to lie in bed at night and look right out on nature at work. Sometimes, when it's really dark, nature will send something right up to the edge of my bed to stare at me until I open my eyes and jump out of my skin. There is a path leading from the tents to a series of canopies under which can be found a kitchen, lounge area and a basic restaurant consisting of wooden tables and a stove - and if, for some reason, you get bored late at night when there is no longer enough light to explore the forest by, you don't have to worry because somebody from the sixties has stopped by and dropped off a complete library of Andy Capp books for your reading pleasure. Always assuming, of course, that you thought to bring a torch to read them by.

The place is run as a family business - although, naturally, the family gets to live miles away while staff do all the hard day to day work. To be honest, I think we've got the better deal anyway. All power is supplied by an on-site generator as there is no electricity this far out from civilisation. At Midnight, the generator is switched off and everything becomes pitch black. Nights in the tents are very dark indeed, the forest around me full of the exotic cries of unseen creatures, and the ground below my hammock making unsettling slithering noises. Nobody in their right mind is going to get up and walk in pitch black through the forest to the kitchen in the middle of the night and there's no smuggling in a midnight feast as no food is allowed in the tents either - there are apparently mice in the forest that can smell a tiny scrap of food from miles away and will gnaw through everybody's bags during the night to get at it.

There is a walking trail through the surrounding forest, and this is marked by an orange rope which takes me on a three Kilometre hike through the undergrowth -although it is recommended that we inform reception before heading off into the forest, as there are supposed to be venomous snakes and Saltwater Crocodiles all around us. Lovely. There is also a beach at Cow Bay, a little down the road, but we've been told that we mustn't go swimming because it is Box Jellyfish season and the Box Jellyfish is one of the most deadly sea creatures known to man. One sting can paralyse and kill a man in thirty seconds and the things are translucent just to make sure you don't actually get any chance to get out of the way before you blunder into one. Even the foliage is a bit suspect out here. There is a tree called The Stinging Tree, whose leaves are covered in tiny spines which perforate the skin if you brush against them - these spines secrete a poison into the bloodstream which, although not normally deadly, causes intense body-wide pain for up to nine months and for which there is no anti-venom. The rainforest of Northern Queensland is seemingly the most beautiful and endlessly exciting place to visit just as long as you don't touch anything, breath on anything, smell anything or look at anything. Nevertheless, I figure I have to die at some point, and if I'm going to go I quite like the idea of appearing in the local papers under the headline "Stupid Pommie brushes up against death fig"

Yesterday, after sitting by the pool for an hour or so discussing nasty ways we could all meet our demise out here with an Austrian girl called Rebecca, I decided to try the rope walk and see if anything really was going to try to do away with me. Reception provided me with a fair sized leaflet listing the forty points of interest along the way and what to do if something with razor sharp claws jumped out of one of them while I was inspecting it. One of the trees along the route has the unfortunate distinction of being one of only eighteen of its kind left in the world, which I would think would suggest a trip to the garden center for a packet of seeds. After splashing my way through creeks, sinking to my ankles in mud and shoving unyielding branches out of my way right and left, I arrived back at Camp two and a half hours later having literally dragged myself through a hedge and the smile on my face told everyone that I'd enjoyed every minute of it. My one big disappointment is that I haven't seen a Cassowary, the large flightless bird which occupies this area - although this isn't exactly too surprising as they are almost extinct and anyone that encounters one is considered very lucky indeed. In fact, there is a sign at reception which reads:

IF YOU SHOULD ENCOUNTER A CASSOWARY WHILE WALKING IN THE FOREST, PLEASE INFORM RECEPTION OF THE TIME AND PLACE IMMEDIATELY FOR STATISTICAL PURPOSES

I'm told the Cassowary are magnificent birds and that they would rather follow people around than run away from them - which probably explains why there are so few left. The official advice in my guide book for what to do should I encounter one is to take a moment to consider myself very lucky, and then stand totally still because otherwise it might chase and attack me. So nothing new there then.

This morning, we were visited by a Cockatoo. She came into camp around breakfast time, wandered unfazed through the crowded dining tent saying 'ello to everyone in a broad Westcountry accent, and then passed most of the rest of the morning playing fetch with a piece of coconut. I came back from stretching my legs in the forest at lunchtime to find her giving a very impressive display of gymnastics using the metal railings at the top of the lounge steps. It looks as though the poor thing has a damaged wing and a broken leg, but she wasn't about to let any of us catch her to check, so we reckon she must come to camp regularly looking for an easy source of food.

This afternoon, I took a boat tour along the Daintree River, which seemed to be filled with Germans. The boat, not the river. They all wanted to know every little detail about the birds in every tree, every snake and insect they spotted, and pointed at every slight movement in the water shouting "Croc! Croc!" at the guide. Our guide, for his part, was very patient but after half an hour of constant questions suddenly developed a wicked sense of humour:

"In that tree over there, you can see a Sea Eagle"

"Excuse me, please? What do they eat?"

"German Tourists"

There are plenty of Saltwater Crocodiles on the Daintree and we were lucky enough to see a group of them snacking on a cow that had fallen in the water. There are two types of Crocs - Saltwater and Freshwater - and "Salties" are the ones to be worried about, since Freshwater crocodiles are generally far too laid back to attack unless provoked. Here's a little known fact: Contrary to popular belief, Humans are not on the Crocodile food chain. If they do attack a Human, which has only been recorded as happening a handful of times in the last century, they don't eat the body. Instead, they drag it down to the bottom of the lake, stick it under a rock, wait for it to begin to decompose and use it as bait to catch the things they actually want to eat. And on that gruesome thought, I shall say goodnight as our coach leaves early in the morning and I don't much like the idea of oversleeping and being left alone in the rainforest surrounded by a million hungry things...

(1) Globally, fifty acres of rainforest are being destroyed every hour - that's just about twenty-six million acres a year. Every single second, an area of forest the size of Wembley Stadium is removed from the face of the Earth. In the time it has taken you to read this paragraph, deforestation has accounted for land the size oftwentyFootball pitches being laid bare. In every four square miles of rainforest, there are up to 700 species of mammal, bird, amphibian or reptile - and somewhere, one species becomes extinct every thirty minutes. If we continue at the rate we are, the rainforest will be gone in thirty years and up to ninety percent of the world's animals will go with it. This is not a joke.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.