It’s dense and humid in the jungle. The noise of the birds, the sweat, the mosquitoes… they all conspire together to remind you that this is untamed country.
“Keep an eye out for Crocs,” says Gaz. “They shouldn’t be up this far, but you just never know.”
We are wading up a stream in the rainforest at the foothills of the Port Douglas Mountains in tropical north Queensland. Gaz’s last words do little to make me feel comfortable in this foreign environment, but we are soon distracted from all of that. We are searching for something, and as Gaz’s pace slows my thoughts are back on fish. Up ahead, a tree across the water blocks our path. We make our way onto the bank and sneak towards the tree, crouching to get under the palms that line the banks. The fish we are looking for is a predator and Gaz has already told me that the biggest, dominant fish in the pool will be holding up where the feeding opportunities are best. The log has created a funnel, pushing all of the water in the creek through a narrow one meter wide channel and there at the mouth of the funnel, sits a dark shape.
It’s a jungle perch, without a doubt, and it hasn’t spotted us. To the untrained
