Lamington National Park Excursion

Terry Martin drove me to southeastern Queensland to see the semi-tropical rainforest at Lamington National Park. This was absolutely stunning. We walked a couple of trails, climbed a ladder into a tree, saw a lot of animals (including the red bellied black snake), and enjoyed the day. It started out to be a pretty rainy day, but it cleared up by the time we arrived at the park. The park is atop an escarpment, and the road is very windy and twisty as well as narrow. The drop offs near the top of the escarpment are stunning and a good place for hang gliders to launch. You could see the Gold Coast high rises from the top. I'm not sure how far away the coast is from Mt. Tamborine, where we were driving, but it seemed like a long ways off.

The rain forest where Lamington National Park is located was preserved by the O'Riley family when they first bought the land. It's pretty remarkable that they conserved this bit of forest back in the early 1900's, and it's even more remarkable to note how much of the rain forest was cleared for farming.

I really enjoyed seeing the rain forest. Here are some pictures from the day:

That's me at the entrance to the border trail.



Strangler figs and trees send their roots over everything on the ground, including huge boulders. The next three photos are of strangler figs. They're correctly named in that they strangle the tree they're growing on. The seed from these plants germinate high in the canopy and then send down roots to the ground. Once the roots are established, it's just a matter of time before the fig surrounds the host tree and keeps it from being able to grow outward. The host tree eventually decays away, which leaves a lattice of strangler fig stems around the ghost trunk.





We climbed ladders up a tree to get a look at the canopy. The top platform holds two people at a time, and is 30 m above the forest floor. These views are from the tree:




This last photo is of a stump after the tree has been cut down. The strange shape outlines the buttresses of the trunk.