Everyone is leaving. The flow of tourists has slowed down from the thunderous wave of Australien families to a calming trickle of overseas solo travellers, more interested in the real jungle experience than the kids-friendly tourist traps. Budgetary restrictions force them to bring their own food, anyway it's more authentic, then to feast in the overpriced restaurants at the side of the road that try to serve stereotypical croc-burgers to the new generation of fundamental vegans for three arbitrary hours of the day. The decrease in workload creates a stress vacuum, allowing the casual employees to overthink their lives during the slow hours of the day. The backpackers go, new adventures await. The locals stay, but start shuffling around until a new minimum in the employer-employee harmony function is reached. The absence of tourists lets everyone breath freely again, a relaxing silence spreads in everyone's minds, and the locals rediscover their favourite spots. My working days here are over, a week is left full of meticulous planned day trips that my busy work schedule over the past few months didn't allow to partake. This is the time when I discover that I have finally arrived in the jungle. While in some ways I never integrated into the local community, never followed their politics or social events, I have at the same time overtaken the average resident in my knowledge of the area. Lacking in one place but thriving in another I can hold my stance in a discussion about the Daintree, can give out valuable information and ever so often encounter a community member that tells me 'Oh, I haven't done that yet.' How the tables have turned. At the peak of my relationship with this place I also finally start to see the jungle. I remember how I arrived here, surprised that I didn't see any wildlife. Now I see it. It's hidden in the darkness of the tree's shadows, camouflaged between the leaves, and high up in the canopy. It's crawling and crouching soundlessly on the forest floor, a sea of spiders, crickets and lizards, whose tiny movements in the corner of your eyes are labelled insignificant by a brain so used to the coarse motions of city dwellers. I finally start to hear and distinguish sounds, differences in frequencies and amplitudes that are irritating and pleasant, and sometimes so beautifully unintuitive. A cricket that sounds like a frog. A frog that sounds like a bird. A bird that sounds like a dog, a monkey, a bullet or a cat? The occasional rain, which has made this dry season so irregular, frequently attributed to climate change, also gave the rainseason-avoiding traveller a peak into how that would look like. How everything comes alive when the wet arrives. Heavy rain might stimulate a multitude of tiny, ugly froglets to synchronise their stunning calls over acres of forest floor into a concert, so ingenious, that my primitive mind is looking for the people that are having a party in the peak of night.  Alluring promises of the dramatic effects and visions that the incoming thunderstorms and cyclones at the beginning of the rain season provide are tickling my mind and only the description of the hot and humid, constant rain and mould everywhere keeps me from being properly enticed to stay longer. Also, I've gotta go. Australia is so much bigger than the Daintree.