Cape Tribulation is the northern-most point of our Aussie road trip, roughly 3000km from where we started in Byron. It was named by the famous Captain (then Lieutenant) Cook, who, having sailed nearly 16,000 miles across the world, managed to crash into the Cape 200 feet from the beach in 1770. Luckily a clever crew member managed to patch the ship's hull with an old sail, enabling them to coast ashore into a palm-lined paradise...

Before we visited this paradise, we visited the namesake town of the Daintree National Park, Daintree. The park is pretty impressive. The LP (Lonely Planet) tells us that although it only covers 0.01% of Australia's landmass, it has 36% of the country's mammal species, 50% of all birds, 60% of all butterflies and 65% of all ferns! Impressive as the park is, the village itself wasn't much. It featured three arts and crafts stores, a fish and chip shop and a sleeping dog.

Daintree village sits on the bank of the muddy Daintree river, surrounded by mangrove wetlands. If you ever go to Daintree, the one thing you should remember is DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE WATER. There are around 70 adult estuarine crocodiles cruising around in its murky waters. We had already been suitably freaked out by one of these creatures in the Bornean rainforest, so what did we decide to do in Daintree? We hopped onto a shallow bottom boat and went looking for some more...

At Bob Belcher's Crocodile Cruises (awesome name! Like a villain out of a Roald Dahl book), the receptionist shuddered when I bought an ice-cream from her;
'How can you eat that? It's so cold!'
It was 25 degrees. But to be fair to her, that's 10 degrees less than it normally is at this time of year. Luckily for us, the chilly temperature meant it was a great day to be looking for crocs. When it's hot they normally sleep / lurk under the water amongst the roots of the mangrove trees.

Coasting down the river bank at noon, swerving round thick overhanging tree branches and up side-streams, we saw 3 adult crocodiles. The first was Elizabeth, a 20 year old female thus named because when she was younger she had a paw injury that made it look like she was giving a royal wave. As we chugged by, Elizabeth decided to join us, and coasted alongside us for ten minutes, slowly swishing her tail, blinking her 2 sets of eyelids against the midday sun.

Having thankfully left Elizabeth behind us we then spotted Scooter, a 20 year old male lying on the river bank warming himself in the sun; and last but in no way least we saw the 46 year old, 5.3 metre long big daddy of the river, Fat Albert. He was mostly underwater with just his massive head resting on the bank, but you could tell from the shadow of his submerged body just how enormous he was. Though they look slothful for most of the time, when they want to crocodiles can move at 60kph – both underwater or on land – from a standing start. Imagine a 5.3 metre, 1 tonne crocodile moving at you at that pace.

(NB. Googling 'Fat Albert' just now to check I got his size right, I came across a news article from November 2009 in which crocodile tour operators were facing a government investigation after Albert attacked one of the tour boats: 'In an unprecedented attack and with little warning, the dominant 5m male known as Fat Albert, lunged nearly a metre out of the water and bit the railing of a small tour boat. Tourists scattered for safety as the huge crocodile left behind bite marks in the metal'. Very glad we didn't read this beforehand!)

Still shivering with fear, we drove on from Daintree and boarded the car ferry to cross the crocodile-infested river and get onto the Cape. It's like Jurassic park over there. Enormous trees, giant ferns and steaming mountains looming over the forest. The beach Cookie (our nickname for the increasingly familiar Captain Cook) landed on was incredible. Aside from the crashing incident (and later being killed by natives) he was a lucky man – white sands, turquoise waters and palm trees.

As we took another trek through tropical rainforest on the Cape, alert for rogue Cassowaries, it was amazing to think that 6 weeks earlier we were in the snowy mountains of Tasmania, and that just a week ago we were in the cool farmland of the Atherton Highlands. Even having driven 3000km across just one state, the sheer scale of Australia is hard to get your head round.