If you look after this place, this place will look after you. The words of the Ma:Mu, whispering its Jujaba (creation) stories along the contour lines of rainforest country in Queensland’s Far North. Firefly studded understories, grumbling skies, lightning sheets, crystal creeks, old-growth forests, walls of rain. The place of the Jirrbal, Gulngay, and Ma:Mu. Welcome to the Gambil Yalgay—the Misty Mountains—the last remaining connection of the juboonbarra to the gambilbarra, of the coastal plains to the rocky country of the tablelands.
From the lowlands of the eastern tropical borders of Tully, to the upper reaches of the sub-tropical rainforests and dry woodlands of Ravenshoe, this expanse of land becomes grounded in lessons of focus under heavy rainforest canopies and a history buried under lawyer vine.
Encompassing the Djilgarrin, Cannabullen, Koolmoon, Cardwell Range, Gorrell, and Bally Knob Tracks, the Misty Mountains wilderness trail network brings you into the terrain of Tully Falls and Tully Gorge National Parks, alongside the southern section of Wooroonooran National Park—the wettest place in Australia, now protected under the legislative label of World Heritage Area.
But this story doesn’t start there. Instead, eighty kilometres southeast as the crow flies, you drive under the notorious overhang of loaded clouds into the early hours of the morning in your tenth year as a paramedic. The night dumps its own uncertainty across those far northern hills that drop into the upper reaches of the
