It’s always nice to be welcomed by new friends, particularly if they’re as winsome as John and Myriam Baker, owners of The Hotel Cairns, a 4-star resort that oozes tropical ambience. The Bakers have a talent to make you feel at home and do things in style. They even let their guests drive any of their fleet of Smart cars. For a French woman who has never dared drive on “the wrong side of the road” the offer is too tempting to refuse. There’s hardly any traffic in town and only one road outside the city limits. I reason that I drove around the Place de la Concorde once and managed to get out of it unhinged but unscathed, so the streets of Cairns seem like an excellent opportunity to renew with my long-lost driving skills. Besides, Smarts are European cars, so the set-up looks familiar, only in reverse, so I brace myself for action and launch ”Cutie” gingerly on the Captain Cook Highway, resisting my travelling companion’s encouragements to go over 80km/h in the 100km/h zones. Surprise! It’s like cycling: you never quite forget! The Mercedes-engineered and Swatch-designed two-seater Smart Car may look odd from an aesthetic point of view, but it’s as cool to drive as it is environmentally friendly. It drinks less than a camel and has the lowest greenhouse and air pollution emissions of any car sold in Australia. I want one! This afternoon, our five-strong foreign correspondents platoon split to visit various areas of interest marked for us by Anna Denby, our ever efficient and friendly trip organiser. Some stay in town, others drive up north. I choose to visit the beautiful Botanical gardens of Cairns, enjoying the peace and shade provided by the massive umbrellas of the red flowered Madagascan Poinciana and the towering canopy of 1000-year-old Pink Cassias. Strolling under this phenomenal flora of oversized ferns and palms make me feel like a Lilliputian.

We all meet again for dinner at the Plantation restaurant in the Hotel Cairns where we are introduced to “Junior”, a spritely 78-year-old musician whose grand parents came from China during the Gold Rush and who plays in the “Supper Club Band” on Friday nights. There’s also an Aboriginal didgeridoo player who demonstrates his amazing skills with this ancient instrument and patiently answers all our questions. After a couple of refreshing Caipiroskas for apéritif, our hosts insist we try the specialty of the place: a huge slab of prime beef served on its own hot stone, like an individual barbecue. It looks pretty spectacular and, with no vegetarian among us, appeals to all tastes. We’d like to sip more yummy cocktails in the languorous tropical night air but have to curb our alcohol consumption and partying mood to be in shape for the 4:30 am departure for the Hot Air Balloon Ride and Champagne Breakfast Morning Tour hotair.com.au/cairns.

Bleary-eyed and not quite in the mood for Champagne yet, we hop onto the bus for an hour-long bumpy drive to the ballooning site and disembark in a pitch-dark field somewhere on the Atherton Tablelands.

Three inflated balloons are poised on the dew-covered grass, each containing about 20 tourists. Our group climbs onboard one, as the first light of dawn muddles the clouds. Our pilot cheerfully enumerates the safety procedures and then blasts an enormous torch flame. The loud “bang” and a sensation of being snap-toasted make us almost jump out off our skins. Then, we find ourselves eerily floating above land, in absolute silence. The ascension is so quiet, motionless and windless that it feels like watching the ground recede under us on a cinema screen. In this utter stillness, our spirits rise in harmony with the sun which bathes the haze-covered Tablelands in crimson hues. Even the cranky little kid in our basket stops crying, leans over and gapes with awe. Our contemplation is occasionally interrupted by another loud torch blast when the balloon needs to gain altitude, reminding me how vulnerable we should feel drifting in a wicker basket suspended under an inflamed parachute! Strangely enough, except for the disturbing big bangs and hot flashes, I feel quite at ease and invincible, surveying the lush landscape from a greater height without the sound of an engine. After nearly an hour of hovering around, the balloon slowly descends. It’s full daylight now and we can see trees poke out through the morning haze still blanketing the fields. They’re getting bigger. Alas, the end is nigh! The ever-cheerful pilot instructs us to assume the landing position and we gently crash down to Earth. There’s a moment of worry as it looks like the basket might overturn on us as it is dragged away by the deflating balloon. It remains precariously poised at an angle and a few people are asked to disembark to help pull the ropes and make weight against the wind. Finally, the rebel basket settles down and we all leave the deflated aircraft, help clumsily with the folding of the huge canvas and are driven away to a welcomed Champagne breakfast in a historic shed cum café on a nearby farm.

A couple of hours later, we arrive in the cute little town of Kuranda, a sort of troppo Nimbin with colourful handicraft markets and crazy cafés, to experience the famous Skyrail Rainforest Cableway skyrail.com.au. This 7.5 km-long suspended cable rail is an amazing feat of clever engineering which carries hundreds of thousands tourists a year above the canopy of this pristine World Heritage-listed tropical rainforest, without leaving any environmental footprint. From the platform, we hop onto a passing gondola and enjoy the fascinating botanical landscape under us as only birds would be able to. At the second rest platform, an enthusiastic young ranger shares his passion for the rainforest and his knowledge of its many resources, pointing out its poisonous traps, like the Gympie-Gympie (or Stinging Tree) or the Lawyer Vine (commonly called Wait-a-While, for obvious reasons), as well as its earthly delights such as the native ginger berries or the antioxidant-rich Davidson’s plum.

We then pick up our waiting Smart Cars at the Skyrail carpark and all go our separate ways in pairs to Port Douglas, Barron Gorge National Park and the Mossman Gorge. I make it to Yorkey’s Knob out of curiosity, decide I’ve driven far enough and return to the hotel in time to change and join our group for a Chinese dinner hosted by Tourism North Queensland at the excellent China Café.

Our third day in the Wet Tropics is dedicated, as it should, to the Great Barrier Reef. We are dispatched to different boats. Anna, Lin and Urs end up on the Quicksilver Outer Barrier Reef quicksilver-cruises.com; René on the Sailaway Port Douglas (sailawayportdouglas.com); Femke on the Passion of Paradise (passions.com.au) and myself on the Ocean Spirit (oceanspirit.com.au) . The day is a bit rainy but clears up sufficiently to enjoy a spot of snorkelling and an hour on the beach at the Michaelmas Cay under the watchful eyes of about a million spooky black sea birds. Passengers are offered a range of options, from scuba diving and snorkelling lessons to a trip in the mini glass bottom submarine.

On Day 4, Roger de Vos, from Adventure North (adventurenorthaustralia.com) picks us up early in his old classic Oka truck. We drive up to Cooya Beach, a small Aboriginal community about 15 minutes north of Port Douglas. There, we meet up with the Walker brothers, Brandan and Linc, from the Kuku Yalanti clan, who teach us how to survive in the local habitat in the traditional way. Brandan first takes us to the pristine, deserted beach to teach us to throw a spear to fish and hunt, then deeper into the mangrove to pick edible resources such as “Gurralyns” (cone-shaped shell fish), mangrove mussels or periwinkles. We stalk mud crabs unsuccessfully for about an hour of laborious progress among the distorted high roots of the mangrove trees, tramping knee deep in the soft, slippery mud. He warns us that if we spot a crocodile on the beach, the safest thing to do is to run into the mangrove where the nasty beast won’t be able to follow us. Incidentally, he boasts that while crocs won’t harm Aboriginal people from the Kuku (pron. ‘goo-goo’) Yalanti clan as it is their totemic ancestor, they’d have a healthy appetite for us-of-the-white-skinned-visitors kind. On the way back to his parents’ house for morning tea, Brandan points out some interesting trees and vines, such as the “umbrella tree” which is used to treat toothache and the “burning bean”, the seed from a vine which can be rubbed on a hard surface until it’s hot enough to cauterize a wound.

Back at the house, he cooks the fruits of our food-athering expedition, namely a few tasty mangrove mussels served with chilli oil supplemented by half a dozen ‘gurralyns’ and a slice of home-baked damper. When we express our surprise to see gigantic green turtle shells leaning against the porch wall, Brandan explains that only people from his tribe are allowed to hunt them and eat them, which they do only for special occasions and only after asking for the animal’s forgiveness before killing it. The hunter has to do so in a particular manner so that the turtle’s natural poison doesn’t contaminate the meat which would then kill the consumer.

After saying our fond goodbyes to Brandon and his family, we head to the Niau Falls, named after an unfortunate French family who tried to settle there in the 19th Century and were forced to abandon their homestead after too many disasters resulting in a suicide attempt. We enjoy a refreshing swim under the beautiful falls, then head back to town full of new knowledge and adventures.