Silky Oaks sits on the Mossman River, just downstream from Mossman Gorge, with forty treehouse-style suites looking over the water or the rainforest canopy. The Healing Waters Spa, including a couples’ room, draws on the river itself, and First Nations Kuku Yalanji guides lead tours into what they call the rainforest’s natural supermarket.
A guided walk through Mossman Gorge, Kuku Yalanji country for some 50,000 years, takes in granite-boulder swimming holes before a Daintree River cruise, in the world’s oldest continuously surviving rainforest, spotting estuarine crocodiles and more than half the world’s mangrove species along the banks.
A full-day sail out of Port Douglas reaches the outer reef, where the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s two adjoining UNESCO World Heritage sites, meet at the waterline.
The drive north to Cape Tribulation is where the rainforest runs straight onto the sand, with a stop at the lookout before the return to Port Douglas.
