Camera Traps – August 2024

Camera Traps – August 2024 accrued 66-cassowary sightings, 60-dingoes and 765-feral pigs.  Against the cumulative monthly average, cassowary numbers fell by 42%, whilst dingo-sightings rose by 50% and feral-pig numbers soared by 308%.  Against August 2023, cassowary sightings were 10% fewer, dingo numbers also fell by 40%, whereas feral-pigs numbers exploded by a whopping 567%!

With the Mossman Mill entering voluntary administration on 20th November 2023 and going into liquidation on 22nd March 2024, the Queensland Government approved a transition package on 28th February 2024, with $6-million towards the transport and haulage of sugar cane from the Mossman region to Gordonvale and $5.9-million being allocated to support the Mossman Transition Plan in search for the best way forward in supporting the future of the Mossman economy.

Rich with descendants of the world’s most enduring and knowledgeable rainforest custodial culture and occupying the most proximal and scenically spectacular staging point to the World’s oldest and most irreplaceable rainforest, as well as the Great Barrier Reef and also Cape York Peninsula, Mossman has a tremendous, unrealised tourism potential.  However, it has been largely sidelined from the Douglas Shire tourism boom, in favour of Port Douglas and Cairns’ communities and particularly from the uncharitable intergovernmental tourism re-direction policy of the past three-decades.

Under the framework of the Far North Queensland Regional Plan 2009–2031:

• Mossman is the main administrative, service, agricultural and industrial centre in the north, whereas Port Douglas has a stronger tourism focus.

Under the stipulations of the Douglas Shire Planning Scheme 2018:

• Mossman will continue to develop as the major administrative, commercial and industrial 
centre in Douglas Shire and Mossman’s identity as Queensland’s northern-most sugar mill town is strengthened;
• Port Douglas will continue to develop as the premium destination for international and 
domestic tourists in the Far North Queensland Region & major tourist, retail, dining and entertainment facilities will consolidate in the Town Centre 
and the Waterfront North sub-precincts;

Under these statutory planning provisions, the intergovernmental policy – that directs future growth beyond the sustainable level of visitor-use in the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area to appropriate areas south of the Daintree River, uncharitably extends beyond the boundaries of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and across adjacent jurisdictions and trade boundaries of privately-held property, but it also by-passes Mossman onto the tourism advantages of Port Douglas and Cairns, with a force that has been driven through:

• The strategic re-gazettal of Regional National Parks to stretch the ‘Daintree’ brand southwards;
• Excision of the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area from the State’s Electricity Distribution Authority;
• Massive over-charging of travellers across the Daintree Ferry;
• Denying Commercial Activity Permits north of the Daintree River through Ministerial moratoria; &
• Investing tens-of-millions-of-dollars into competing destinations, including the Great Green Way, the Misty Mountain Trails, Ma:Mu Skywalk, the Great Tropical Drive and the Wangetti Trail.

Whatever rationale drove tourism so resolutely south of the Daintree River has also excluded Mossman from achieving its tourism potential.  For a rural community sustained by sugar-production for over a century to lose its primary product’s viability, with all the infrastructure and dedicated farmland held under State planning ordinance, tourism should be the catalyst that allows Mossman’s transition to alternative primary products with less uncertainty.

Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd has been registered by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and successfully entered onto the Register of Environmental Organisations.  Donations made to the Daintree Rainforest Fund support the Daintree Rainforest community custodianship and are eligible for a tax deduction under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.