Beached As

I think I should explain this photo. A full body spandex wet suit – costing all of seven dollars – may cause you to resemble a gimp on spring break, but it can also stop you from becoming fish food; struck immobile by any number of stray stingers proven to inflict prompt, swift, grievous bodily death. This is something our lifeguard Zack “can’t stress enough”. Two weeks ago a man was hospitalised within an hour after meeting the acquaintance of a bluebottle jellyfish. A Lycra wetsuit is therefore the easiest seven dollars Zack will make all day.

During our pre-snorkelling debrief (and I can’t stress the word brief enough, particularly for someone whose closest memory to deep sea diving was picking up a brick from the bottom of a swimming pool about 15 years ago), there is a lot of information that Zack “can’t stress enough” – an overwhelming list of catastrophes to put the willies up any Great Barrier novice. It may be one of Earth’s most beautiful sites (the world’s largest coral reef system stretching to some 1600 miles) but the challenge makes us fearful like gladiators at the Coliseum.

Coral may be beautiful to look at, but don’t for heaven's sake stand on it, even if you panic. Hard coral can cut, leading to possible infection upon which your leg will be summarily donated to marine science for research purposes. Because of May’s Super Moon, the tide is so low the coral lingers close to the surface. This makes the likelihood of entrapment very high. “Snorkel around the coral,” Zack says. “I can’t stress that enough.”

Leave only with photographs, we are told, and don’t remove any of the coral. Swim within the buoys. Don’t wave to friends while in the water. Don’t graffiti your initials on the shell of a green turtle. Don’t chase a giant trevally into the baying path of a nearby reef shark. He may not have said those last two, but fear had taken hold by this point and creating its own imagery. The Aussie adage of “no worries” did not seem to apply here on the reef. There seemed to be plenty to worry about.

I got the hang of breathing without asphyxiating quite quickly, although much of the experience was bewildering. Humans may make passing impressions of marine life but we paint quite a pathetic picture, really, and betray our aquatic ancestry. You can’t help but get the impression any passing turtles are having a tremendous time observing the flailing spectacle from the ocean’s murky depths. I bet they gather on the coral in groups and piss themselves laughing.

The tide pushes me over a particularly dense section of coral and for a moment I’m awestruck – a mass of gently pulsating, bleak tentacles seemingly drawing me in, closer. Quite frightening, really. As for observing the sea life, the glass bottom boat was more successful. “How did you not see a turtle?” says one of the crew. I think I was trying not to swallow my own body weight in salt water. Sorry, sir.

The Low Isles – where we are – are a coral cay on the outer reef encompassing hard coral, which means we won’t see the more colourful stuff they show on the adverts. That’s fine with me. Low Island is a paradise which will take a child two minutes to run around (I overheard this fact). It is an hour boat ride from the Australian mainland. It has a lighthouse and a cabin for the island’s only inhabitant – a caretaker – which is obviously a job which comes with its own perks. Day trippers anchor yachts near the giant catamarans which shuttle tourists into the reef on a daily basis. Queensland University has a base here for its marine biologists and it’s clear to see why. The reef contains 1500 species of fish, 5000 species of mollusc, 2195 known plant species. Nine different species of seahorses live here. Nine.

They can also keep a close eye on how quickly the whole thing is disappearing. The reef is pretty high on the Things to See Before You Die list, or rather, Things to See Before They Die, followed closely by watching the Rolling Stones. Since the 1920s, rising sea levels have seen Low Isle shrink by 20 per cent. Then there is coral bleaching caused by an imbalance of algae in the warmer waters. At this rate, the Great Barrier Reef could be extinct within a hundred years.

Evelyn, a superior sea faring intellect, takes our bushy tailed troupe around the exposed coral. She’s a master of the Australian understatement. She spots a tourist trampling over the bay in the faraway distance and spares no sympathy; he’s exposing himself to injury from conefish, stingrays, jellies and other nasties. “People don’t listen to me,” she sighs. She tells an American tourist not to touch a sea cucumber (pictured opposite) – a spectacularly inert object from the starfish family which can eject a harmful toxin from its phallic like body – to which the man responds by running his fingers across it. Her frustration is palpable.

Someone spots a sea snail – an unassuming shelled creature about the size of an old 50 pence coin. Evelyn explains the creature can render a human quite redundant in less than 60 minutes. My thoughts go back to the lone traveller in the distance and I wonder what’s worse: the fear of instant paralysis or an almost certain bollocking from Evelyn. Given her current state of mind, I’d take my chances with the conefish.

You shouldn’t joke, really. This is, after all, the part of the country where Steve Irwin was killed, struck in the heart by a stingray. Appropriately, we were told this fact after our snorkelling session. Evelyn said, with more than a hint of pride, that tropical North Queensland “has them all” in terms of flying, crawling, biting, stinging, killing things. This is where, only last week in the Daintree rainforest, a golden orb spider was filmed eating a tree snake. I should probably repeat that. A spider eating a snake. You don’t need to try and picture the ghastly scene, because you can see it here on YouTube.

A park ranger in the Daintree casually stands by the biggest spider I have ever seen, relishing in the story of how the males are devoured by the females after mating. Woody Allen would have now made a joke here about how much this reminds him of an ex-girlfriend. A ranger at the Daintree says she loves her job in the forest and how it’s better than an office job, although you do have to put up with snakes. Not too dissimilar from journalism, then. Ba-doom.

From the Skyrail you can see the vast expanse of rainforest which meets the sea and the sky beyond, and the views are breathtaking. Stomach churning, too, if you’re no keen lover of heights. The Skyrail reaches 1788ft at its highest point. Packed into a cart no larger than a fridge-freezer, the cable car actually sways in the wind. Sitting on the floor of the car won’t help you either, because you can still see the tops of the trees through the flooring; designed, seemingly, to give all the vomit a chance to escape.

But the views are insane, and just about the only place in Australia where you can see anything like it, including the township of Cairns and the reef islands beyond. We had already fallen in love with the place by this point – the cheese selection in the Port Douglas Coles had put paid to that.

Port Douglas is sea village with an easy, Byron Bay attitude with some of the best restaurants I have ever visited and absolutely no pretensions, because the environment speaks for itself. Bill and Hillary Clinton spent their wedding anniversary here, and Bill must just love the place. He was eating in the sublime Salsa restaurant on September 11, 2001, and just had time to sign a dinner plate before a plane hit the north tower and he was promptly evacuated from of Australia.

But the ranger was right. I would choose the snakes, too.