It was a most wonderful perk of a contract job that, to get to our work site, we had to fly by helicopter over the remote tropical forest fastness of the McIlwraith Range on Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia. And back again two days later.

There are no roads in the Kulla (McIlwraith Range) National Park, an area of 1,588 square kilometres (397,000 acres). This is the southern part of a belt of tropical rainforest that extends 150 km to the north to the better-known, though still remote, Iron Range.