Tamborine Mountain

7th November 

Yesterday was a long driving day - I was going to spend a day & night in Toowoomba, as it sounded interesting.......but it wasn't really - just a large sprawling town. 

It did have an interesting mountain called Table top mountain, but I arrived there at midday, and it was too hot to start climbing it, so I decided to head for Tamborine mountain & National Park which was nearly 2 hours away, but what with stopping and checking directions (my phone seems to get super hot using Sat Nav so I was afraid it would boil,) so was trying to navigate the old fashioned way. 

Also, Australia also has plenty of nutters on the road and people determined to drive 'up yer bum' even though I was doing the speed limit. Where the parks are the roads get extremely winding and steep, with narrow bits and long drops down.......the views are amazing, but its slightly stressful driving - I'm fine when there's no-one tailgating me.....then its quite enjoyable.

By the time I got to Tamborine - I just went to the rest area, made some dinner then, had an early night.

Tamborine mountain area had a kind of alpine feel to it and was very quaint

Nice and early next morning I went to Curtis falls, which was lovely - rain forest trees and a creek. I made a little friend in the bushes - so cute. 

There were fruit bats in this part of the forest too - they are so fascinating,  just hanging their squarking and you can hear their wings flapping as they fly.

Then Cedar creek falls, which had a little rock pool you could swim in - so nice

The Tamborine 'Skywalk' a wobbly platform through the rain forest canopy - it was amazing. The trees are just so tall!!

My favourite tree is the Giant Strangler Fig. It basically implants itself and grows into a host tree, enveloping it over thousands of years & eventually the host tree dies. They are just so twisted and huge.

I then moved on to Springbrook National Park.....about a 25 min drive and again, quite mountainous & green. They must get a fair bit of rain in this area as there are flood warnings on most of the roads. I suppose it's a valley - Numinbah Valley.

Hard to imagine that millions of years ago Australia was all rain forest 

Driving round what looked like a huge lake with submerged, dead looking trees at the edges I found Hinze dam, kind of, by accident 

Then I paid a visit to the Natural bridge which had a waterfall & formed a cave with micro bats inside & glow worms

I spotted the bats. There were loads fluttering about, but the glow worms - if they were there - were not glowing.

It was a nice walk round then parked up for the night