trilogy
A
WA
Beyond Bondi A
’s
yw
[ by Jessica Wynne Lockhart ]
54 |
| JANU
Y 2023
MA
snug against my face, I float on a raft in crystal-clear water. Beside me, my guide points out the tiniest of fish below. “There are more than 30 species that live here,” he says. He’s even helped to identify critically endangered species, like the rare opal cling goby. His enthusiasm for the creatures is contagious, and my eyes are wide with wonder as I begin to spot fish hiding amongst the rocks, the sun glinting off their scales.
As a guest at Silky Oaks Lodge, a luxury retreat in far north Queensland, located adjacent to the Daintree Rainforest, I’m a 30-minute drive from Port Douglas, the jumping-off point for some of the best diving on the Great Barrier Reef. But today, the water I’m submerged in isn’t salt, and I didn’t even have to board a boat to get here. I drift down the Mossman River, a pristine estuarine system that flows from the Great Dividing Range to the Coral Sea.