I planned to get up at the nice, leisurely hour of 9 a.m.

But my gecko kept going off in the middle of the night.

Yes, in the heart of the Australian rainforest, you may share your luxury resort room with tiny lizards. Their talents -- besides keeping, thankfully, well out of sight -- include making beeping noises remarkably like an alarm clock.

And not just to a bleary-eyed Canadian unfamiliar with reptiles of any stripe, either. More than a few guests during a stay at the Coconut Beach Rainforest Lodge Resort shared that they, too, were punk'd by a relative of the Geiko insurance pitchman.

"It's good luck to have a gecko in your room," insists Rachel Uratoriu, front office manager of the lodge, 140 km north of Cairns in Australia's Queensland province.

"We get calls from guests saying, 'I have a baby crocodile in my room!' We tell them it's OK, they're geckos, they're very friendly and they're very common here."

Better a gecko than a croc or just about any other creature hidden in the vegetation surrounding this ultramodern resort.

Cape Tribulation contains one of the world's oldest rainforests.

For 110 million years, the northeastern corner of Australia has been covered in ferns, mangroves, palms and literally thousands of other varieties of plants. It's survived cyclones, fire and the continued encroachment of man.

It's also the only place in the world where two UNESCO World Heritage sites -- the Daintree and the Great Barrier Reef national parks -- meet side-by-side.

Carlie Willock knows both extremely well. She guides a Toyota Landcruiser filled with tourists through teeth-rattling gravel roads and eye-popping vistas of the coast.

With every twist of the wheel there's another story, from the Aboriginals who still live in and rely on this remote paradise, to the rare southern cassowary -- a flightless bird that stands as tall as a man.

Sometimes, she says, the bird will be spotted hanging around the Coconut Beach lodge.

"Just don't get close to it," she warns, noting the cassowary's nasty streak is legendary.

In this dark rainforest, which receives up to four metres of rainfall annually, flora and fauna both have to be tough to survive.

Take the lawyer vine, also known as the "wait-a-while." Hooked spikes cover the vines, grabbing tree branches that reach for sunlight above the rainforest canopy. The spikes also easily hook clothes (and skin) -- and yes, you'll wait a while before extracting yourself.

Rugged, too, is the road north of the lodge, at least the parts that haven't almost washed out.

"It's kind of the way we prefer it," says Willock as the Toyota dips into a swollen creek.

"We don't want this road improved. More vehicles means more development, and man's footprints will be all over these beaches."

The beaches she refers to soon come into sight: Glistening white sand, gentle waves, a scorching tropical sun beaming down on a stand of tidal mangrove trees.

Rainforest behind you. Coral reefs in emerald water ahead.

And nary another soul in sight.

Too soon, however, it was time to return to the Toyota for the bumpy trip back to the lodge.

"I love this place," says Willock, who smiles broadly when told (no doubt for the thousandth time) of my gecko roommates.

"That's what I mean. I go to bed listening to the sounds of the rainforest. It's a completely different world."