In clear sunlight and cool, upland air, grey-headed robins inspected Vilis’s and my campsite while we ate a hot porridge breakfast. Operatic chowchillas sang resonating melodies in the rainforest, and grey fantails fluttered off branches to capture insects on the wing, their lovely fanned tails gilded by the sun.

As Vilis and I strolled along the shore of Lake Paluma, a fellow camper we’d met last evening offered us the use of his double kayak, an offer we accepted with alacrity and which took us out onto the lake’s deep blue waters rippled by fresh breezes. Rainforest crowded the lakeshore, the trees tall above shrubs growing out into the water. We paddled for an hour and a half on that reservoir, enticed by its sprawling length and many inlets, some of which we knew to contain platypus, although we saw none. Half the world away from Canada and surrounded by vegetation totally different from boreal forest, that lake nonetheless exuded the same wild ambience as Canadian Shield country. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my thinking, I heard the cries of loons.

For the remainder of the morning, we explored the forest bordering the lake, stepping off roads onto unmanicured trails and dry creek beds, seeking birds and the Boyd’s forest dragon, a dark, foot-long dragon that clings to rainforest tree trunks and possesses a collection of dermal spikes and spines that would be the envy of a punk-rocker. We saw no dragons, but found lush streambeds and heard unknown birds singing in the canopies of trees impossibly tall for a birder to discern avian shapes and movement. Wary eastern whipbirds scratched in forest litter and skittered through underbrush. Brown gerygones repeated their questioning call of “Which is it?” while flitting among leaves and twigs of trees and shrubs. From a clearing beside the road, we heard the light, tinkling serenades of a group of barred cuckoo-shrikes which revealed themselves in a treetop, the adults slim and dark grey with pale yellow eyes and crisp white-and-grey bars on their bellies. The rainforest, so lush and thick with life, revealed some of its secrets readily and held others close to its tangled chest.

Today’s birds: Australian brush-turkeys, grey-headed robins, grey fantails, little pied cormorant, sulphur-crested cockatoos, Lewin’s honeyeater, little black cormorants, welcome swallows, white-browed robin, chowchillas, eastern whipbirds, brown gerygones, bridled honeyeaters, little shrike-thrush, topknot pigeons, golden whistlers, white-browed scrubwrens, white-throated treecreeper, *barred cuckoo-shrikes, Macleay’s honeyeater, spotted catbird. (*indicates lifelist sighting)