Australia -- Bat Love

IN TROPICAL QUEENSLAND, WHERE THE BREAT BARRIER REEF KISSES THE COASTLINE, THE ANCIENT DAINTREE RAIN FOREST STRUGGLES TO SURVIVE AND PROTECT ITS SECRETS. HERE LOVE WAITS IN THE SWEET, SOULFUL EYES OF A GIANT BAT.

She wore leather, a cape of black leather wrapped tightly around her tiny body, as if she were playing dress-up out of her naughty Aunt Scarlet's closet.

Her stare was disarming, through large, chocolate-brown eyes that were at once demure and curious, shy and playful. She was, in an exotic and beastly way, startlingly beautiful.

The pink point of her tongue slid saucily out of her mouth.

"She likes you, I think," Brigitta Flick said, chuckling.

But it'd be a hard relationship to maintain. For one thing, she was truly from the other side of the world - a child of the Australian rain forest, the Daintree, that huddles on the edge of Northern Queensland, where the coast juts east and practically bumps into the Great Barrier Reef.

For another thing, she persisted in hanging by her toes from the ceiling.

If I fell for her, it'd have to be head-over-heels. Or more precisely, heels over head.

"Look, she really does like you," Flick said. "The way she's swiveling her head to look at you right-side-up: Just because they rest upside down doesn't mean that's the way they prefer to look at the world. When flying foxes are really interested in something, they'll turn their heads around to see things the same way we do.

"Here she comes for an introduction. She's a lover, this one."

The spectacled flying fox in question - could I call her any other name than "Matilda"? - had unfolded her wings and was grappling her way along the netting that hung across the top of a garage-size screened enclosure at the Cape Tribulation Tropical Research Station, which Flick and her husband, Dr. Hugh Spencer, founded about a decade ago.

Matilda made good, if slightly awkward, "thumb-over-thumb" progress until, just over my left shoulder, she hung from her feet again and turned her head to look me straight in the eye.

Like all bats, flying foxes (their long snouts, big eyes and almost terrierlike ears give them a fox-ish look) are classified in the order Chioptera, or "hand-winged."

Their wings - which, in these Megachiroptera fruit bats, can span from 3 to more than 5 feet - are forelimbs evolved for flight and, when at rest, become built-in blankets they wrap around themselves for warmth and security.

Four extended "fingers" covered with leathery membrane (actually an extension of their skin) form the wing structure. The "thumbs" are tiny clawlike extensions about halfway along the top edge of the wing.

Matilda extended her hand, hooked her thumb onto my shirt- sleeve and heaved herself into my arms . . .

A rain forest, in Australia?

It might sound odd to talk in terms of stumbling onto a tropical rain forest. But that's more or less what happened.

For many Americans, Australia conjures images of, on one hand, the Great Barrier Reef, with the Great

White Sharks and vibrant coral fans and brimming pinnacles that Jacques Cousteau and his crew brought to our television screens. On the other hand, there's the Outback with its kangaroos and endless red-sand desolation, spinifex prairies, and dry stands of gum and mulga and spiny wattle trees.

Our knowledge of complex and varied Aboriginal cultures tends to be built on a shallow handful of stereotypes. And our vision of the continent's fauna is dominated by leaping kangaroos, cuddly koalas, maybe a few prickly echidnas, lumpy little wombats and laughing kookaburras.

Not long into the research and planning for my first visit to Australia, however, I began to notice references to "the Daintree" and the "Wet Tropics World Heritage Area."

The nearly 500-square-mile rain-forest system, estimated to be more than 100 million years old, is believed to be the most ancient in the world - 10 times older than the Amazon.

Here, on 1/1000th of Australia's landmass, amid a patchwork of national parks encompassing a mountain range or two, nearly inaccessible uplands and steamy lowlands, reside one-fifth of the continent's bird species, a quarter of its reptiles, one-third of its frogs, two-fifths of its plants and one-third of its marsupials.

According to the United Nations, the area represents the earth's densest diversity of endemic species.

Americans may generally be ignorant of its existence, but after several decades of confrontations between environmental activists and timber and development interests, Australians seem to have embraced its uniqueness and importance.

Not that the Daintree's future is safe and assured. Development pressure, and the government's hunger to expand mass motorcoach tourism in the region, prompts residents and environmentalists to continually shore up their bulwarks.

For instance, proposals regularly recur to build a bridge across the lower Daintree River, replacing a tiny car ferry that provides the only access to still relatively pastoral Cape Tribulation. There also are political and economic pressures for major road projects, mega-resorts and real estate developments in the lowland forests north of the river.

Currently, the 35-mile coastal strip from the Daintree River north to the Bloomfield River supports only a few smaller-scale resorts and hostels, and about 1,000 residents.

My route to the Daintree took me 95 miles north from Cairns, a 2 1/2-hour drive on the well-paved coastal road. The Key West-style town of Port Douglas, lately fringed with upscale hotels and golf resorts, lay about halfway: a jumping-off place for reef trips. Wide stretches of sugar fields led into the timber-and-cane village of Mossman at the edge of the forest.

Twenty miles farther, the ferry awaited at a dusty landing on the banks of the 100-yard-wide Daintree River, flanked by "Beware of Crocodiles" signs.

At a forest ridge just on the other side, at a lookout over the Coral Sea where the tide ruffled its way across the ribbon of the reef, flurries of glacier-blue Ulysses butterflies and the songs of jungle birds assured me that I'd arrived.

Flying foxes hung in the distant trees, wrapped in their wings against the noonday sun.

Strange fruit

On the deck at the main lodge of the Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort, a 4-foot goana lay sunning itself. The monitor lizard, whose name was Rex, is a pet of sorts, although parents are advised not to let their children get too friendly with this cousin of the Komodo Dragon. And sharing bits of lunch is discouraged, no matter how imposing its begging becomes.

A kookaburra guffawed from a branch of a old gum tree.

Just on the other side of the trees, about 50 yards away, the sea washed up onto a white-sand beach.

Kangaroo and crocodile were on the menu, but fresh barramundi, probably Australia's finest whitefish, and an array of exotic fruits felt like a more seemly meal.

Durian, rambutan, mangosteen, breadfruit, soursop, sapodilla and sapote - and a number of other odd-looking and odd-tasting fruits from both the Old World and the New - are grown on nearby farms.

Because of forest destruction and development in Southeast Asia, many fruits are disappearing from their age-old environments. Those mainstays of the traditional diet are now largely being imported back into their native lands from North Queensland orchards.

Growers like Colin and Dawn Gray, just down the road from Coconut Beach at Cape Tribulation, said they've become the world's largest producers of durians - the exotic Asian fruit prized by many for its taste and despised by just as many for its odor - during the past 20 years.

Their families' previous enterprise, cattle ranching, and the forest-clearing it entailed, has disappeared from these protected lands.

They obviously didn't share my passion for fruit bats, large flocks of which regularly raid their and other area growers' groves. Since fruit bats are not considered endangered

or vulnerable, farmers and growers can apply for permits to kill them if they become too troublesome.

One Queensland orchardist in 1998 reported losing three-quarters of his peach and nectarine crop to flying foxes.

An eco ethic

Coconut Beach Resort, which has won a number of Australian and international awards, itself is embraced by the rain forest - and, in turn, seems to have embraced the spirit of rain-forest conservation.

The 67 hillside cabins and slightly more elaborate "villas" were built and designed with a minimum of clearing and excavation, for instance. And they all do nicely without resource-hungry air conditioning. An on-site treatment plant recycles water and waste.

Curlicue vines like the matchbox bean (named for its hard, nutlike fruit, which settlers used to hollow out to protect their matches against the forest's dampness), mosses, lichens, ferns and orchids set the atmosphere, texture and color of the forest grounds.

Giant fan palms and ancient cycads thrive. One of such primitive cone-bearing trees - cycads have changed little since the Jurassic period - standing along a walkway

is nearly 20 feet tall: a venerable specimen, considering that the species grows less than 3 feet a century. The resort has built an observation platform on the grounds for the use of biologists doing rain-forest canopy research.

The resort's staff of naturalists leads daytime and nighttime interpretive walks on the grounds, attracting passing tourists and guests with reasonable possibilities for seeing such forest creatures as Boyd's Forest Dragon, a dramatically crested lizard, clinging to the trunk of a tree. Or a long-nosed bandicoot skittering into the underbrush.

Or maybe even a cassowary - one of Australia's large flightless birds. A 6-foot cassowary can be a big surprise on a walk in the Daintree, as well as a formidable one: They can kick when disturbed, and their kicks can do serious damage to an interloping human.

Unfortunately, this symbol of the lowland rain forest is severely threatened. Their numbers have continued to decline steadily since the last biological census 10 years ago, when 54 adults were counted in the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area.

However, one can be assured of seeing a flying fox at the Bat House, the public face of the Cape Tribulation Tropical Research Station a mile up the road from Coconut Beach . . .

Waltzing with Matilda

As she climbed up my arm and nuzzled, Matilda's true beauty became even more apparent. She wore a mane of light auburn fur like a halo; it also encircled her eyes (hence "spectacled" flying fox).

But it did seem strange to be so drawn to a bat.

Brigitta Flick, however, understood. "Pteropus conspicillatus. That's the Latin," Flick said. "Still, a rose by any other name . . . "

As we got to know each other better, some of Matilda's companions started making their way across the ceiling, not wanting to be left out. Their wings flared almost comically as they clambered toward us.

"Most people are surprised at how loveable they seem," Flick said. "Less like bats than, well - there's still some disagreement about this, but most biologists now accept the idea that megachiropterans are actually primates, like us. Or at least `proto-primates.' Their closest relatives are lemurs, those primates in Madagascar that are universally accepted as `cute.'

"That makes flying foxes the only flying primates. The main trouble some biologists have is that, by conventional definition, primates do not fly.

"In any case, megachiropterans are quite different from microchiropeterans, the New World bats that you have in the Americas and Europe. Those small, insect-eating bats fly by echolocation. Flying foxes navigate by smell and by their eyesight, which is excellent."

There are about 80 species of bats in Australia, four of which are species of flying fox. Only one type of bat on the continent is carnivorous, and none will attack people or, like vampire bats, feed on blood.

"Flying foxes are extremely intelligent, as you can tell," Flick continued. "And affectionate, obviously. But they can't escape the bad bat image."

Still, like all bats, flying foxes can carry parasites and viruses - though rabies is not an issue in Australia. There have been a few reported cases of transmission of new lyssavirus - and at

least one was fatal.

Consequently, public-health notices are stern in their warning not to handle flying foxes.

"Right. It's a `Don't do this at home' type of warning," Flick said. "But don't worry. The flying foxes we have here are healthy."

Good thing, too, because Matilda was starting to lick my neck.

"The trouble is, some people are using the virus scare to campaign against them. And I'll tell you why that's so troubling, especially here in the rain forest:

"Flying foxes, like cassowaries, are what we call `keystone species' - species on which many other life forms depend. Flying foxes are perhaps the most important pollination and seed-dispersal agents in the rain forest. Without them, the forest itself is doomed."

The study, rescue and rehabilitation of the animals has become Flick's specialty the past decade, as habitat degradation has caused a rash of diseases in their population and an increasing incidence of deformity in their young.

The young flying fox working her way around my shoulders seemed unconcerned about Flick's high opinion - or others' disdain - of her. In her eyes, it seemed, at least for the moment, there was only me.

Matilda snuggled up on my other side now. She blew a light breath into my ear and nibbled at the lobe.

And I was, for once and all, in love.