The scenery we encounter is amongst the most beautiful on earth, and includes World Heritage rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, waterfalls, mountains, tropical jungle, and wildlife found nowhere else in the world. We take time off to explore as much of it as we can.

We travel onboard with the drivers, living in a converted carriage, sharing open-fire meals, maybe even cooked on a shovel, listening to yarns, tall and true, from people we meet, and experiencing adventures ourselves. The creeks that flood are still there, and so are the stretches of dangerous track, the same wild animals. And Bundy is guaranteed to be as bloody difficult as ever.

Bundy is one of the last, 'tiny but tough' sugar-trains that once hauled cane from farm to mill, all along Queensland's beautiful coastal strip. Feel the thrill as it races along its impossibly narrow two-foot (60cm) track from one end of Queensland to the other.

When we finally reach the spectacular Daintree Rainforest in the north, the drivers will have driven their precious Bundy over two thousand kilometres, from the sub-tropical south to as deep into the steamy north as the remaining tracks can take them.

The Bundy Riders take their trains seriously. Their passion is common among the men who, before diesel trains forced them out, drove steam trains every working day. As they tell us, they recall it affectionately, because, unlike an ordinary machine, it came with personality. You could consult the manual as often as you liked, if you could find one, but in the end, this train had a mind of its own. You worked it out as you went along. If getting one started was a challenge, so was stopping another. On some days, just keeping it on the tracks deserved a prize. "If you saw smoke coming your way, or the engine did not feel right, you jumped!"

Take a ride on the small, bucking, panting Puffing Billy, on its scarily narrow track and discover that, for seat-of-the-pants thrill, size does NOT matter.

We start out at one hundred-year-old Moreton Mill in Nambour, in the southeast Queensland, and ride the Puffing Billy as far as available track lets us. When the track runs out or becomes too dangerous, we use a semi-trailer to deliver the loco to the next batch of track, and set out again, all the way up the coast of Queensland, till we arrive at Mossman Mill just south of legendary Daintree Rainforest in the steamy tropical north.

We hear chilling tales about the ugly practice of "blackbirding" - a de facto slave trade that snatched Pacific Islanders, offensively called "Kanakas" from their island homes and families, and forced them to work in the canefields. We talk to their descendants who never made it back to their original homes.

We hear stories, some painful, many funny, about determined newcomers with names like Gianamenico and Galea took up farms next to those like Heidke, McDonald and Grogan.

This is life in a different, more relaxed world, where men stopped their train to cook lunch on a shovel over an open fire, and steamed spuds (potatoes) in the train boiler.

It is unlikely anyone will ever do this again. The narrow track that remains is as much part of history as the loco itself. This is a last chance for all of us.