The Dubuji Walkabout. Daintree. Queensland. Australia.

Here I am walking the dark night through the rainiest and wettest place, on the driest inhabited continent on earth. The Aboriginal Kuku Yanlanji people watch, still watch, darkened eyes through the rainforest, even now they watch, since one hundred thousand dream years ago. ‘Nujakura’, they called it here, the place even before the ancient time, place of spirits and home of the ‘Kurriyala’ --- The Rainbow Serpent. I had woken at 4 am to find light and soul along the Dubuji walkway, beneath the Fan Palm cloak of this primeval forest. I am a little me, small as a soldier ant climbing along the groping arms of a Strangler Fig. I am armed with a powerful hunting torch, a camera wrapped in plastic, mounted on a tripod. I stand awhile to breathe the damp air floating; the quietude surrounds me with tropical loudness. There is an eerie dampness ----and still they watch, through dark forest eyes, now and since before the ancient times. ‘Nujakura’. I defend myself from the eeriness; swing my torch through dripping greenness, the forest absorbs light, shrouds and surrounds me with a tropical dankness. Every leaf tells a story, every Fan Palm plays out a symphony of lines and the Mangroves curl their tangled arms into reflections in dark pools of water and somewhere near, the Rainbow Serpent slithers. The earth has a deep pungent mud-smell. A few kilometres north from here, Cape Tribulation juts out into the Coral Sea. In 1770, Captain James Cook floundered on a coral reef. He called the peninsula ‘Cape Tribulation,’ for here, as he wrote in the ships log, “ This is where all the trouble started”. The reef is now called ‘Endeavour’ Reef, named after his ship. Slowly, a dark predawn filters through the jungle as I do long exposures with painted light. With my other eye I search in vain for the near extinct, flightless, Cassowary bird and the prehistoric spiky Forest Dragon, but there are none to view in the web of tangled plants. I play light on repetitive lines and shapes. Somewhere, I believe, that in the human psyche is a deep need for repetition. Heavy raindrops begin to fall from a low grey cloud. I shelter beneath an umbrella of Fan Palms. A few large fruit bats vibrate past me to their caves. The soldier ant in the Strangler Fig has changed into an army. And still the Kuku Yanlanji people watch, with dark forest eyes, they watch, now and long before the ancient time.