At 12:30 p.m., Vilis and I boarded a small, covered ferry that pounded away from Dungeness over murky, green-brown water bordered by mangroves. Grey cloud hung over our destination of Hinchinbrook Island, veiling its dark green peaks and promising rain. Ten minutes later, we stepped from the boat onto the sand at George Point. The ferry operator had informed us that the trail to Mulligan Falls would lead us for an hour’s walk along the beach of Mulligan Bay, followed by an hour of hiking through the forest. Other backpackers waited to catch the ferry off the island, one of them telling us, “You’ll have a great walk.” He wore flipflops that exposed his bandaged toes. Vilis asked a group of women we encountered a few minutes farther along the beach, “How do your feet feel?”

“Bloody sore,” one of them replied, laughing.

Then we were left alone with 5 kilometres of sand, with the sea and cloud, with the misting rain and shorebirds. Tiny red-capped plovers skittered over the beach while eastern curlews, pied oystercatchers, and a mixed flock of terns that included cresteds, a lesser crested, gull-bills, and Caspians patrolled the water line. A long-winged, short-tailed white-bellied sea eagle soared above the lowland rainforest bordering the beach.

Within the rainforest, wet, fragrant smells of damp wood and decomposing leaves assailed our nostrils. Blue quandong fruits and others less colourful littered the trail, which led us for 2.5 kilometres among palms and other rainforest trees.  Roots of some of the trees rose like buttressing planks from trunk bases, while others reached across the wet forest floor like twisted, gnarled fingers or a bed of woody snakes. The easy walk was enlivened by muddy stretches and five creek crossings. After the first crossing, at which we removed our hiking shoes and socks, we simply walked through the shallow streams, knowing there would be many more crossings in the days to come and we would, as the trail information had warned us, inevitably get our feet wet.

We reached the dank, deeply-shaded campsite at Mulligan Falls in mid-afternoon and set up camp in the depths of the rainforest. A pale-yellow robin inspected us, and the voices of Victoria’s riflebirds and other rainforest avifauna penetrated the dull gloom. As per the trail advice given us, we removed all food from our backpacks and stored it in one of the long metal boxes provided as protection from native rats. Then we scrambled among grey, creekside boulders to the pool below Mulligan Falls, where we slid over slippery, algae-covered rocks and dunked ourselves in cool, clear water.