Hannah Strange, the University of Florida marketing intern, writes about her experience at Cape Tribulation in North Queensland:

This may sound a little naïve, but I had never really pictured Australia as a country with amazing rainforests. To me, rainforests were in Asia, central Africa and South America, but Australia? Not really. Boy was I wrong. One of the last stops on our program in North Queensland was the Daintree Rainforest, a World Heritage listed site that is over 100 million years old! We stayed in Cape Tribulation, a very small town (seriously, population 101) INSIDE that Daintree National Park. This area is so protected for its biodiversity that the authorities limit how many people can go over to this headland at any one time, making it one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I have ever been.

While staying up at Cape Trib our group had the opportunity to go on both day and night explorations of the rainforest, which in itself was spectacular. But for me, one of the highlights of the entire trip took place one morning. Our cabins were approximately a quarter of a mile from the Pacific Ocean where we had a completely clear look out to the eastern horizon. One of the other girls and I decided to get up at 5am (after doing a midnight rainforest walk) to watch the sunrise. It was without a doubt one of the most fundamentally beautiful things I have ever seen. That sounds corny, but I’m not kidding. We sat on the beach, looked out to the horizon in complete silence, and it was breathtaking.

We also had the opportunity to visit a local research center and reforestation area. While we were there, our group was able to plant a couple of hundred trees in an effort to restore endemic species and reforest areas that have been destroyed by logging companies. This certainly made us feel better about all that carbon we put into the atmosphere on the 4 flights it took us to get to Australia! Our trip was two years ago, but the group that went this summer told me that the trees we planted are now over 2 meters tall! How’s that for environmental service!

Pictured above is the sunrise at Cape Tribulation and pictured right is Hannah getting to work at the research centre.