A Walk in the Woods

Yesterday Mark and I packed up the car and headed into the bush.  Granted, everything outside the city in Australia can be considered the bush, so this in itself wasn't what was exciting.  The exciting part was our destination - the rainforest.

When I was a kid I thought going to the rain forest was like going to another world.  Looking at books about the Amazon was akin to looking at books about the moon - "Wow, how amazing it would be to go there.  But it's so completely utterly out of reach."  I assumed that the rainforest, like the moon, was somewhere that was near impossible to access.

So, when I was told - long before arriving in Brisbane - that the rainforest was a short two hour drive from where I'd be staying, I was skeptical.  The drive yesterday did nothing to convince me.  We quickly got out of Brisbane to the New Hampshire-like towns that surround it - somewhat remote, but not completely out of touch.  The scenery was beautiful - dramatic, arid mountains that reminded me of pictures of the Western US.  However, there are no rainforests in the Western US, and as we started to climb the final mountain and each hairpin curve brought another herd of cattle, I had accepted that whatever I would be seeing at the end of the drive, it would not be the rain forest.

Luckily, I was wrong.  At the top of the mountain, a switch flipped.  Between one side of the street and the other - a distance of a few yards at most - the sparse trees met a wall of green, and the car went from mountain-top sunlight into a dark tunnel or branches and vines.

I'd reached the moon.  We were in Lamington National Park, a World Heritage Sight that encompasses miles of sub-tropical rainforest in Queensland.  As soon as we left the parking lot we walked through a bird feeding area, where a flock of parrots were awaiting their lunch (one apparently mistook my head for lunch, which led me to duck and protect the vitals while Mark snapped pictures mercilessly).  We were able to do a treetop walk in the canopy, and climb one tree even higher to look over the forest and the surrounding mountains.  I even found a new favorite plant (probably the only favorite plant I've ever had, actually) - the strangler fig.  It begins it's life as bird poo deposited in the top of a giant rainforest free.  There it collects water and leaves, which it turns into a compost pile for nutrients, all while it sends its roots hundreds of feet down to the ground.  It's roots grow and harden until the host tree dies and decomposes, leaving the beautiful braided fig tree in it's place.

In the afternoon we went zip lining, and though the ride itself was a disappointment, it took us on a private tour of part of the park with two rangers to ourselves.  Rangers must need 20/20 vision, because we saw more wildlife with them than the rest of the day - including an echidna (a spiney ant eater) and a massive black snake that I'd prefer not to know the name of.  The highlight, however, came when dingos began teaching their pups how to howl in the hills around us.

We ended the day with a hike to a lookout, and a terrifying drive back down the mountain, albiet with the backdrop of a gorgeous sunset.  I won't complain though - I'm sure the ride back down to earth is a bit terrifying too.