A River Geologist Lending His Name

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Daintree Rainforest never named itself; it inherited its name from the river running through it, and the river in turn was named after a man who almost certainly never set foot in the forest that would eventually carry his name at all. Richard Daintree was a nineteenth century geologist and photographer working across colonial Queensland, mapping mineral resources and documenting the landscape as he went, and the river that cuts through the far north Queensland rainforest was named in his honor during that survey work. The rainforest itself became formally protected only much later, folded into Daintree National Park and, from 1988, recognized as part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that finally gave the ancient forest the legal standing its age alone had never guaranteed.