Crossing the Daintree river by ferry#
The rainforest is named after Richard Daintree, an Australian geologist and photographer (1832-1878).
The Daintree river is some 130 km long, starting at an altitude of about 1.300 m. In tropical rain situations it carries huge amounts of water (often causing serious flooding). Over 1/2 m of rainfall in a day has been recorded a few times!
To cross the Daintree river to reach the part of Daintree National Park north of the river, like Cape Tribualtion (discovered by James Cook on his first voyage in 1770) one could on principal also avoid crosssing the river and taking the main highway 81 north direction Cooktown up to Rossville an then going south on a poor road (the "Bloomfield track"): For the less than 60 km Rossville to Cape Tribulation one needs at todays (2015) conditions some 2.5 hours and a 4 WD!