Rainforest Rocks

This weekend we discovered why rain is a very good thing – Rainforest.

It stopped raining around Thursday last week and hasn’t started again yet so we’re keeping our fingers crossed…..

On Saturday we headed out of town to Tamborine Mountain, which sits in a range of hills that runs through the Gold Coast hinterland. We were a bit puzzled when we arrived as we were expecting a national park and it looked as though building has happened pretty much everywhere desirable on the mountain top and the fragmented areas which are too steep or wet to house B&Bs they designated ‘national parks’.

Still, the steep and wet bits were truly beautiful and, according to the lady in the tourist information, all the rain we’ve had recently have transformed them in the last week. We set off walking in a eucalypt forest, which was mainly brown and dry apart from all the new young shoots that are making a dash for it since the rains. Then suddenly we found ourselves in really dense rainforest, surrounded by big palms, ferns and cycads and it was really amazing.

Rainforest rocks. Not only does it have its own air conditioning, but it also had a great sound track. As we walking we were continually finding pockets of lovely cooled air and everywhere we could hear rustling, shouting, hooting, singing, swooshing and munching and although glancing around all we could see were trees and the occasional cockatoo or parrot, the whole place felt alive and busy and you just know that there’s some serious business going on behind all those trees..

This is a strangler fig, which grows next to a tree and uses it as a prop to get to the light at the top of the canopy, the fig grows to tightly round the tree that it completely encases it and kills it – evil plants - cool huh!


After walking down to some waterfalls and admiring the view - This is us admiring the view....



.....we headed back and bumped into a wallaby, which studied us carefully from the safety of a bush and deciding we were a bit annoying, but harmless, hopped off before we could take his photo.

To get over the excitement we headed off for some refreshment – the wineries! Although Queensland isn’t a big wine producing area, there are still loads of small vineyards, which make some pretty tasty brews. The nice girl at the Tamborine Estate patiently explained each wine to us and what we should be looking for in the taste but, not really knowing our ‘Chenin blancs’ from our ‘Chardonnays’, we resisted the huge temptation to do Jilly Goulder impressions and just stood there and said ‘hmm, that one’s nice’ a lot. After about half an hour we left with a box of ‘nice’ wine….

On Saturday night we went for a curry back in Brisbane, it was nice, but the restaurant was tastefully decorated, they played good music and the staff were quite friendly – What’s all that about? These people have got a lot to learn about decent curry houses….