Site Report: Mount Lewis

Visits

• 2012-11-09: We spent the day scuba diving at the Opal Reef the previous day (review on scuba in that location 4 out of 5 stars), and I was ready to get back into the forest to do some hiking. Our plan was to visit Mount Lewis, and amazingly, the GPS unit in the rental car had a listing for "Mount Lewis Forest Park". Unfortunately, the road that the GPS suggested was one of the worst roads that I have ever seen. We drove up the drier west slope of the mountain, and while the scenery and forest there were quite nice, it was not that much different than the Davies Creek National Park that we had visited a few days earlier (with an easy road to get there). One really cool thing about this area was a spot where a bunch of cicadas were really shrieking. It sounded like we were standing next to one of those multi-prop airplanes... quite deafening! Eventually we arrived at a creek and a dead end. The creek was great for some swimming, and we stayed for awhile, but what we really wanted to see was the cloud forest. We did not see any signs or way to get into this area, but on the way back to our hotel in Daintree, it was decided to try some random roads into the hills. At first, our attempts were fruitless, but just as we considered giving up, I noticed a street name that looked promising, and we headed up a road into the mountains. We followed the road for a few miles at which point we found a footpath into the forest. Following this footpath was one of the highlights of the trip. The dense forest in this area seemed very pristine, and the call of birds surrounded us. We walked around on the paths until it was nearly dark. Not sure how far the trail went, but we only explored a small part of the trail system in this area.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Australasia
• World

Trips

• Eastern Australia