Captain Matty is a brilliant storyteller. I know because earlier this month I went on his famous tour through the rainforest of Far North Queensland, Australia. As he drove our orange bus up petrifyingly narrow, sinuous roads, Matty told tales, tall and short: about the legendary ‘drop down‘, wicked cousin of the koala, so named because it crashes down from the treetops onto its prey (including, Matty said with a wink, a Swiss-German tourist); about attending poisonous snake bites (it involves a credit card and lots of gauze); and about Aboriginal women who use a sacred waterfall to boost fertility. His most remarkable story was about the rainforest.

The Wet Tropics of Queensland span some 280 miles of