Jungle Canopy Surfing, Cape Tribulation, QUEENSLAND
Airing Date: Dec 6th, 2004
About two hours from Cairns, Cape Tribulation's biggest attraction is its rainforest - a tropical, old growth, complex mesophyll vine forest. And now there's a whole new way to experience it.
Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours has introduced a unique tour that allows eco-tourists the chance to glide through the forest on steel cables high above the ground. Once this way of viewing the forest was only available to scientists, but now this experience is open for the public to enjoy.
The Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours operate within a large and private scientific nature reserve on Mount Walsh at Cape Tribulation. It is run by a group of biological scientists who have been providing scientists guided day and night walks through the old growth forest on the reserve for six years.
The tour includes transport to the reserve, an interpretative walk through the forest floor to the surfing location, and the canopy surfing.
Canopy surfing takes place up in the tree tops, with five platforms linked by steel flying fox runs. Each participant is attached by full body harness to the flying fox cables, and they glide upside down from platform to platform at walking pace.
You don't even have to hang on if you don't want to, and you can also take photographic equipment along. The canopy surfing experience lasts around an hour.
Steve, the Jungle Adventures guide, will also introduce you to some of the animals that live in the rainforest. Up in the canopy you might come across the green tree ant. Bizarre as it sounds, you can lick them and get a lemony taste full of vitamin C, or even make tea with them. Down on the forest floor there are all sorts of animals - you may even meet a python sunning itself after a meal.
Accommodation is available at PK'S Jungle Village in an air-conditioned cabin. Two hundred metres from PK's is the Dubuji Boardwalk, leading down to Myall Beach. The round trip will take you an hour to walk.
The facts:
Qantas and QantasLink fly to Cairns. One way online prices start from $157 ex Brisbane, $248 ex Melbourne, $249 ex Sydney, $311 ex Hobart, $336 ex Adelaide, $317 ex Darwin and $352 ex Perth. Prices available online only and include charges/ taxes.
Qantas
Tel: 13 13 13
A Jungle Canopy Surfing tour costs from $69 a person. Price includes transfers, forest walk and an hour in the forest canopy.
Jungle Adventures
Tel: 07 4098 0090
Cabins at PK's Jungle Village cost from $88 a night for two people.
PK's Jungle Village
Tel: 1800 232 333
Suggested reading material: Lonely Planet
Prices available at 06/12/04
