Granite Gorge

Granite Gorge. What a place! Possibly, if not definitely, the most wonderous experience I've had here so far. The weather was excellent, and the park is beautiful. But most of all, there were rock wallabies! Friendly ones! Look at them! They're so cute! They like humans, but they're still completely wild. Crazy.

They'll eat out of your hand. You can buy a bag of feed for a dollar and they'll come right up to you. Rather adorable. They're basically miniature kangaroos, but they've adaped to life in a gorge.. Think mountain goat. They're crazy good at jumping around on rocks and things. Super agile.

This guy was so photogenic. Literally posing for the camera. What a fun day for a photographer!

Green ants. These guys bite, and they're pretty big. Lucky for me, they're bush tucker! I picked one up and tried one while I was here, and they taste exactly like lemons. The Aborigionese make a lemonade-like drink out of them. The flavor comes from formic acid, which is a chemical that the ants make as a defense. Yum!

I love this shot. It just jumped out at me while I was standing there. I couldn't have asked for more compositionally. The two sides of the gorge are perfectly balanced, with the forest and the water running down the center and the blue and white sky... Just awesome. Great day for taking pictures.

The rocks! Beautiful rocks for running around on barefoot! It reminded me so much of the Canyonlands out west... really very beautiful. They were a bit rougher; my friend Erica got some nasty blisters on her feet, but I managed to escape unharmed.

Excellent water. Knee-deep streams were running all over the gorge. There had just been a flood from the week-long monsoonal low, and the park rangers were worried that all of the wallabies would be drowned. This area is flooded rather frequently, and often the wallabies have to wait on the highest rocks for several days for the water level to go down.

Really cool dragonfly... this guy flew in front of my face and then landed on a twig right in front of me.

Rock wallaby with joey in pouch. A good profile, don't you think?

Overall, a great day.

Rainy Days

And then it rained for a week. It poured. It was a thing of beauty. The paths to our cabins quickly eroded away into river systems with deep trenches carrying away the sand and gravel. We were informed that the Gillies Highway, the only way into Atherton, was flooded, and that we were effectively stuck at the center. Wow. That's a lot of rain. In fact, it's been an especially rainy wet season this year... we've gotten half the rain we're supposed to get for the entire season in just a month!

Right then, pictures: the first is a pretty red plant we have growing outside of the center. There was a bit of sunlight at one point so I was able to sneak a picture of it.
And here's my attempt at capturing the rainfall... we have a perminant puddle at the back of the center, so I set up my camera and took a bunch of shots until I got one with a bunch of drops in it. Neat, huh?

Next stop, Granite Gorge, the most beautiful place in Queensland.

Atherton Birds of Prey Show

A couple Sundays ago (sorry about the lack of updates recently; exams and all, you understand), we made it down to the Atherton Birds of Prey show. Basically a guy that's an awful lot like a more environmentally friendly version of Steve Erwin was there, showing off his birds and talking about endangered and introduced species. It was pretty cool because birds are impossible to photograph in the wild unless you're really lucky, so it gave me the oppertunity to get some nice pictures of some native Australian birds.
To the left is a beautiful owl... I took the first shot totally by chance as it was leaping into flight from Jill's hand. They really have an incredibly large wingspan for such a small bird, don't they!

Here's another one of the same owl. Just gorgeous. I love the pattern on the feathers and the wide, parabolic cones on its face. Owls like this hunt largely by sound, being primarily nocturnal, and the circular arrangement of the feathers on its face allow it to pinpoint the movement of small creatures on the forest floor by focusing the sound much the way the fleshy ears of mammals do.

Here's another owl; this one's crochety and old. It was hit by a car and doesn't have very good vision anymore. We couldn't see him fly because he's not very extensively trained, but he was a beautiful bird nonetheless.

Heres an example of one of the only endemic Australian hawks left. Gorgeous bird. I like the reptilian scales on its legs. These things are really amazing in flight. Native Australian birds of prey tend to be ambush predators, however... they like to wait on a branch for hours until they see something worth catching. Australia hasn't been the best place to live in the last couple of million years, so predators like these don't really go for the big stuff... mainly insects and small reptiles.

This was a huge bird. Absolutely gigantic.. probably weighed about 30 pounds. It takes a very strong gust of wind to allow this guy to take flight because of his size, however we were lucky... it was windy that day. Notice the piece of grass stuck in its beak? I thought that was funny.

Right then, more to come.

And so it came time for our first "excursion"... our four day trip to Chillagoe. We were told that the Center for Rainforest Studies was to wet as Chillagoe was to dry. We were told that Chillagoe, though it was the wet season, would be as dry as the day is long. These were filthy lies. After four days of beautiful weather with clear skies, we made our way to Chillagoe, and upon our arrival, it proceeded to rain vigorously for the next three days. This means rain while sleeping in tents. This means a soaking wet DOWN sleeping bag. This means smelly, unhappy people. This means the cancellation of many of the things we were supposed to do because of the rain. For example, we were supposed to explore some bajillion year old lava tubes... they were completely flooded. For the first time since 1991. In fact, Chillagoe hasn't had this much rain in a very long time... they've already had their yearly average of rainfall in the first couple of months of the rainy season. Go figure.

Despite the unpleasantness, I was able to photograph a couple of interesting things. To your left, you can see a giant termite mound. This was a baby compared to some of the ones we saw driving in... they're literally as big as very large cows. They also are grazers. Each colony consumes about as much grass as an average sized cow.


Here's a pretty nice photo of a couple of rainbow lorekeets (sp?). These guys are quick, but I still got them. They're pretty, and they look rare, but they're actually pretty abundant in some urban areas of Australia, causing much anguish to the locals with their very annoying calls. They are nectar drinkers, and they commonly drink so much nectar that they become drunk and hang upside-down from trees, sometimes even falling to the ground! I do have a photo of one hanging upside down, but it's too blurry to bother with here.

We also went to see Trezkinn Cave... this is one of the many interesting rock formations I saw there. It was a really neat place... damp and dark, but still more pleasant than it was outside (rainy and hot). There are bats living in this cave, and we saw a number flying about and causing craziness.



Here's a green tree frog I saw at the Eco Lodge we stayed at (in tents). For those of you who don't know, an eco lodge is like a regular tourist lodge, except the owners are basically never around, everything is run on the honor system, and they never put new rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms. Lovely!
A wonderfully plump leech. These things give me the creeps.
At our second campground, someone with sharp eyes found this giant centipede. We took pictures, but were careful not to get too close... the giant centipede has a venemous bite that can make you rather sick. Note the camera in the picture for scale. This is a rather large insect.
Yet another rather large insect... a giant cockroach. This guy was just sitting in the grass. It was delightfully smooth to the touch, and about as big as most trilobites were back in the day.
Here's a picture of me after my field work pulling Lantana, an invasive weed, at 40 Mile Scrub. Note my dirtiness and my snazzy new hat. We worked for three hours, clearing .6 hectares and killing 20,000 plants. Only 100 hectares of infested rainforest remaining (ugh)!

Here is a picture of our final campsite. Note the beautiful red soil.. that's a volcanic soil called basalt.

Well, this entry hasn't been nearly as narrative as I had intended it to be, but I suppose I'm just not such a good story teller. Oh well, a picture says a thousand words, eh?

More to come. Sit tight.