Cookies policy


30 July 2014

Ghost of the cloud forest: Seeking the white possum

Ghost of the cloud forest: Seeking the white possum

The white possum has been dubbed the polar bear of the rainforest (Image: Wet Tropics Images/Mike Trenerry)

We enter Australia’s lost world of species marooned by evolution to meet one of its rarest, a creature uniquely vulnerable to climate change

IT TAKES less than three hours to travel from the busy tarmac of Cairns Airport, back 100 million years to Queensland’s primeval Wet Tropics rainforest. By the time the sprawling malls and suburban estates have given way to blue sky and sugar cane, we have already rewound several decades. Veering inland, we swim against the tourist tide streaming towards the Great Barrier Reef. As jungle encloses us, the notion that we have crossed into a more primitive dimension is encouraged by road signs cautioning drivers to watch out for southern cassowaries – stroppy, flightless birds sometimes likened to prehistoric turkeys.

A boom gate restricts access to the sanctum of Mount Lewis National Park, to stop it being loved to death by naturalists and birdwatchers. The barrier rises and the rugged track lurches through some of the most ancient landscape on the planet, a dense tangle of living fossils. There are conifer species here that evolved more than 200 million years ago, but the dominant flowering plants are a mere 60 to 120 million years old.

At 1200 metres above sea level, the track gives up. This is the cloud forest, where mountain peaks float like cool islands in mist from the Coral Sea. Marooned up here are creatures of a lost world, with such fine-tuned adaptations that they can never leave.

Fifty million years ago, rainforests covered two-thirds of Australia,

To continue reading this premium article, subscribe for unlimited access.

Quarterly by Direct Debit

Inclusive of applicable taxes (VAT)