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Local Info

The area between Mossman and Bloomfield is the original home of the Kuku Yalanji tribe who used to live in small kinship groups of 8 to 12 in camps spread along the banks of the rivers and creeks. These camps were semi-permanent and included dome thatched huts.

The tribes were hunter/gatherers and depended greatly upon toxic rainforest vegetation which had to be carefully prepared before being eaten. Their distinct and unique rainforest culture is probably about 9000 years old.
Local Dancers Perform in Daintree Village

Local Dancers Perform in Daintree Village

The 1870's saw the arrival of the first European settlers following the discovery of gold, tin and other minerals, plus the lure of the magnificent red cedar, and there were frequent violent conflicts between the tribes and the new settlers with many fatalities on both sides. In fact, reports indicated that by the mid 1890's the original Aboriginal population had been decimated.

The coming of the Europeans saw the start of changes to the traditional tribal way of life and, for a period, many of the local tribes lived in church missions.

Today, many descendants of the original inhabitants live in the Daintree area, and the Kuku Yalanji are proud to have retained much of their cultural identity.

History Of The Daintree Region

The Daintree River was only discovered by Europeans in 1873 when Scottish geologist and explorer George Elphinstone Dalrymple named the river and the first settlement, Daintree Village, after Queensland’s Agent-General in London, Richard Daintree.

Timber Gallery & Big Barramundi BBQ Garden

Daintree Village was originally the base for timber-cutters who came to log the red cedar which once flourished in the area, and some of their original tools may be viewed in the Daintree Timber Museum & Gallery. The Village gave it’s name to the famous World Heritage-listed Daintree National Park which stretches in sections between Mossman Gorge in the south to the Bloomfield River in the north. Before the road to Mossman was completed in 1933 the only access to the Village (which now has a population of about 100 people) was by river.

Daintree River

Today tourism is a major industry throughout the region but many descendants of the original settlers still live here, some operating thriving beef-cattle properties in the river valleys beyond Daintree Village while others farm sugar and tropical fruits. Driving north from the sugar-mill town of Mossman towards Daintree the road travels through extensive areas of sugar-cane, set against the magnificent backdrop of the rainforested coastal ranges - and beautiful uncrowded beaches are only a short distance from the main road.

Stewart Creek Valley

An Amazing Tale of Survival by Craig and Dianne Pocock

In 1874, a young married French family fled to England to escape the hardships of Paris, caused by the political rigors of the time. Arriving in the London, Monsieur Henri Joseph Niau and his petite wife Madame Marie Caroline Niau were soon lured by the promises of a new French commune in the Pacific, known as “ La Nouvelle France”.

Unbeknown to them and the other four hundred settlers, the founder of this project, the Marquis De Rays was a man of poor character and his promised land was little more than virgin jungle, home to cannibal native tribes.

Rather than joining the Marquis’s fleet of settlers in 1879 on their voyage to the supposed paradise, the Niau’s chose to make their own way to Sydney Australia in 1880, settling at Edgecliff, to allow the colony to be properly established.

In late 1880, one of the fleet of four ships that took the settlers to the colony returned to Sydney to collect provisions and relate tales of starvation, death and disaster. What was promised to be a paradise proved to be a living hell and upon learning of his countrymen’s fate, Henri funded and led a rescue mission to save the surviving colonists.

Upon his return in April of 1881, Henri met with a consortium that was selling land on the banks of the Daintree River in Far North Queensland, based on the promised development of a sugar mill nearby. Unseen, Henri took an Agricultural Homestead Lease over two square miles (1240 acres) of virgin rainforest at one pound an acre payable in ten years and relocated his wife and daughter to the banks of the Daintree River. Initially the family lived in a small calico tent until a suitable house site could be established and cleared with the aid of Chinese labourers from the nearby goldfields.

When the promised sugar mill failed to eventuate, Henri set about clearing his land in earnest, selling the Red Cedar logs he fell for a sizeable profit. This profit was soon consumed as the family established their house, roads and planted fields with crops, principally corn. Their house was set nine feet off the ground on wooden stumps, with a rough sawn floor from timber transported from the sawmill in the Daintree Village, calico walls and iron roof.

Three years of misfortune followed. The family’s first year crop was lost to flood in 1884 and the second year’s crop lost to fire in 1885. In 1886, Aborigines displaced from the goldfields made their way down the Daintree Valleys, attacking and killing white settlers. Henri was forced to barricade his small family into their tiny house guarding against surprise attack twenty-four hours a day. To make matters worse, members of the family, including Henri, succumb to malaria. At the height of the fever, Henri would try and drown himself in the little stream below their house. His wife Marie would physically tackle Henri and try to restrain him as he dragged her through the undergrowth.

In 1887, the family abandoned the their property on the Daintree and relocated to Neutral bay Sydney. Henri then went on to invent and patent a device for speeding up the maturing of wines. Unfortunately, one of the principal ingredients was antimony and while developing the invention Henri accidentally poisoned himself. He died at the age of 48 in 1888.