Susan Lawrence

Yes, we do have a wonderful crane and it makes it one of the most unique rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere.

And I do get to go up in it and it's the most glorious experience.

And tell me what happens?

Oh, can I first tell you that as a rainforest biologist who spent their life in rainforests, we look at the forest always from the bottom and we're missing out on where most of the action is.

And so when you get up in the crane and you start to see the rainforest from above, it completely changes your perspective of how that forest is functioning.

Well, I think the first thing that I pay attention to is one of the amazing characteristics that makes rainforests more special than any other ecosystem.

And it's the diversity of plants.

And when you're in the canopy, you're looking for flowering plants and you're looking at how rare they are across the landscape.

We're about 40 metres, but the canopy itself may range from 25 to 35 metres.

And the beauty of the crane is it can actually drop us down into gaps so we can reach various tree canopies.

Oh, well, we can do all sorts.

We can do just for the very terrified people, we can just do the elevator movement.

Or when we're working up there, we generally can be up there for a couple of hours at a time.

Some people get seasick.

I've never experienced that.

But I think when you're writing a lot of notes and it's moving, perhaps that's why.

It's quite a hard one to answer because you've got to work out where you're going to cut it off.

So the Daintree National Park itself was the largest lowland rainforest national park.

And so that was 50,000 hectares.

But that's now continuous with parks that go up almost to Cooktown and then south past to Port Douglas.