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.

Nocturnal Noodlings

Right then, here are some night-related shots. Here's a picture of a nocturnal bat that Jess, one of my professors, caught in a bat trap. We measured its forearm length, fed it some honey water, and then set it free. I got to keep one in my shirt (in its bag, of course) to keep it warm. They loose body heat really quickly when they aren't flying.

For this one, I saw the light coming from the moon coming through this tree and decided to take a long exposure. For some reason this picture looks great on my computer but really bad on the CRS's lab computer... really dark. Basically, if it looks bad to you, I'm sorry, but I really like this picture.
Same deal. This is a picture of the stars, but it looks completely black on my screen in the lab. Oh well. You can see MILLIONS of stars out here on a clear night. It's exactly like when I went out to the Canyonlands a couple of years back... really incredible. When you're away from light pollution, you really can see how ancient people found pictures and characters in the stars... there was just so much more to work with before the electric light came into play! Anyway, sorry if you can't see them. I tried.

More to come! Next: My adventures in Chillagoe!

Good times

The good times are still a-rollin' down in Queensland, that's fo-sho. We went to lake Barrine a while ago on an excellently beautiful day, and I got a pretty nice picture of a spiderweb (left). These things are absolutely everywhere... it's not uncommon for me to walk through six or seven each morning to get to the center from my cabin. It used to bother me a little, but now I just think "hey, it's just silk anyway". I got a pretty good panorama at the lake, but it was too large to upload (21 images... it's a monster).
Here's a palm with fruit that we saw at the lake. I like how one side has no fruit and the other side is just fruiting. It looks like a set of lungs.
Here's a nice picture of a cane toad. This one was about 8-10 inches long. They're everywhere.
Long exposure of me doodling around with some fire on a stick.
We decided to have a campfire, which was really nice. We played games and sang Beatles songs and had a great time. I like this one with people's feet in it... it's a long exposure, so Colin's feet look sort of crazy.


MORE TO COME!!

An oasis in a vast dry country.

Well, it's been a fruitful couple of days. I've had a lot of oppertunites to take some pretty good pictures, and I'm happy with the ones I've posted below. Enjoy them... I'm going to go take more.



Not sure what kind of butterfly this is, and it's sort of overexposed in areas, but I like the contrast.



Larvae of a Ulysses Butterfly.



A dragonfly. There are lots here... again, they don't like to sit still for photographers, so I got lucky this time.



A neat-looking flower... very weird.



Cathedral fig. This is the largest strangler fig in the area, and it's beautiful. Doug and Syb, two aboriginal people I've met here, told us that this used to be a courthouse and a place of punishment forbidden to children. They used to climb up to the top with picnics when they were young despite the rule.



A male Australian (Cairns) Birdwing. The females aren't very brightly colored. This is my first decent photo of a butterfly here. They regularly flutter around everywhere, but they never ever sit still for long. This one was flirting with me though, it kept flying away and then coming back to me; maybe it liked the colors I was wearing. By the way, this is another one of those insects here that's as big as your face... it's Australia's largest endemic species of butterfly.




A fungal reproductive body. It attracts flies, which spread spores to other areas that (hopefully) become another fungus somewhere else. I was lucky to find this one, these things tend to emerge and disappear within a couple of hours.




Ants herding aphids on the underside of leaves. For those of you who don't know, ants regularly herd aphids like humans herd cattle. They drink sugary sap from plants and then extrude droplets of honeydew for the ants to drink. In return, the ants give them protection from beetles, who love eating them. It's kind of like the mafia. This is a mutualism that has existed for millions of years.



Two very picturesque trees.



Very bright green lichen/moss stuff. I was a big fan.




Some funny little fruits. They look like miniature pumpkins. They were powdery and hard.






Me in the ping pong tournament. I won two rounds and made it to the finals, but Bonnie finally defeated me and I went down in a blaze of glory to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". It was awesome.




Curtain fig. This is a big ass tree.



Spectacled flying foxes. There were literally hundreds of them in this narrow patch of Mabi 5b forest we went to visit. They make quite a racket, and it was a hot day (as always) so they were flapping their wings a little to cool themselves down. These things are about half a meter tall.




A Rainbow Skink. It was playing dead in the middle of the path. I don't know if you can see the iridescence, but this thing was absolutely beautiful and amazingly good-natured.




An Australian King Parrot. Just showed up outside of the center while I was cooking my eggs for breakfast. There were actually a few of them, but my zoom lens isn't quite good enough for me to have any better shots than this. Pity. Looks like I'll need to drop some cash on a better lens in the future.






Panorama taken near the Yungaburra Market. Every fourth Saturday, there is a farmers market and crafts fair sort of thing.. I went to it yesterday and I got a bottle of delicious Davidson Plum wine (it's a sweet dessert wine... a proper gift for my host family). I also got a small jar of local honey, and a new hat. It's sort of like the Indiana Jones hat my dad likes to wear, only the top part is made of mesh so it doesn't fill up with sweat. I like it.. it works well (i.e. protects me from the sun and keeps me cool), and it's collapsable. It was a good day for market shopping.





Here's a panorama from some high point... we had a field lecture here about the different types of forest. If you look closely, you can see a lighter-colored forest in the foreground and a darker one in the background. The reason for this is that the mountains are causing orographic rainfall (moisture hits the mountain, rises, cools, condenses, and it rains) on the darker areas, so rainforest can grow there. It's really dense, so it's darker. The lighter areas don't get as much rain, so they're dry schlerical (sp?) forest.




My friend Nate getting ready for the ping pong tournament. Just look at that grin.




A very large carnivorous water beetle. Found in the grass outside of the center.




Self portrait. I still look the same.