Week Eight

Waterfall

Springbrook Rainforest

Me and the parrots

Tambourine Mountain

Hello again everyone and welcome back to JayceDownUnder! Well, it's Week Eight now, which means that I'm  officially halfway through my time here in Australia. This is beginning of the second week of the mid-term break, and after this week there will be six more full weeks of class followed by two weeks of final exams. After that, I'll be back home. Now that I have returned home from my short vacation up to the Gold Coast I plan to spend the remainder of my break relaxing and completing some pretty big assignments due in the near future. As there's not much other than that going on at the moment, I'm going to spend this post discusing the all-day tour of the Gold Coast "hinterlands" I took last week.

On Monday, the day after my visit to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, I embarked on a Southern Cross 4WD all-day tour. After being picked up from my hotel, we headed up to Tambourine Mountain, pictured above. I have to say Tambourine Mountain was probably one of the most uniquely Australian I've been to so far in. For those of you that don't know, wilderness in Australia is commonly referred to as the "bush". Therefore, the term hiking is not used down under; instead it is called "bushwalking". Tambourine Mountain is considered bushland and is considered to be distinctive from the rainforest. As you can tell from the picture above, it is full of eucalyptus and gum trees and is a fascinating place.

While on Tambourine Mountain, we stopped for morning tea at a lovely place called the Old Church. After that, we continued on to Tambourine Rainforest. As if the bushland on Tambourine Mountain wasn't fascinating enough, the rainforest was one of the most naturally beautiful places I've ever laid my eyes on. Having never seen a rainforest with my own eyes, but having viewed many photos,  I kind of had an idea of what it would look like but I was still absolutely blown away. True to form, the rainforest was noticeably colder than the rest of the mountain, due mainly to the fact that the forest was so thick and dense there was barely any sunlight shining through the canopy. Inside the Tambourine Rainforest, there was a beautiful waterfall and a picturesque creek on the forest floor.

After we were done walking through Tambourine Rainforest, we stopped for lunch after a half-hour drive through the Queensland "hinterlands". After lunch, I tried having a go with a boomerang and managed to get it to more or less return to me a couple times (the other throws were complete disasters however). After we were done, we took another 45 minute drive through the mountains up some very steep and windy roads, some of which were more than a little nerve-wracking. Upon completion of our drive, we arrived at Springbrook National Park, another mountainous rainforest filled with strangler trees, Wonga vines, and Australian birds. Australian birds are not only more exotic and more colorful than North American birds, they are also much louder. As I walked through Springbrook Rainforest, the air was filled with all kinds of exotic birdsongs. There is a bird native to the Gold Coast area called the Queensland Albert Liar bird, which is incredibly unique in that it can imitate almost any sound from a camera snap to a running chainsaw.

The Springbrook Rainforest trail eventually gave way to the rainforest skywalk which consisted of rickety bridges several meters above the rainforest floor. The last thing we did on the tour was bird feeding just outside the entrance to the rainforest trail. The moment I was handed the feed tray, I was swarmed by beautifully colored birds. While the parrots were absolutely gorgeous, I could only hold the feed tray for a few mintues at a time as it was quite painful to have all their talons dug into me. It was also a bit frightening the way they would come to you, swarming right at your face and landing atop your head. But overall, it was an immensely enjoyable experience and I'm very glad I did it.

Well, that concludes this week's blog post. See you all next week!