Lamington National Park& Natural Bridge

Kim let us borrow her car for the day so we could explore the area. We had looked up hikes around Mt Warning. Its tip is the first part of the Australia mainland to see the sun rise. It sits on the edge of the large Tweed volcano. And along the rim of this vocano is the Gold Coast Hinterland (multi-day) Great Walk.

Due to time and weather, we decided to do a one-day hike along the Great Walk track, through Lamington National Park. It goes past two large waterfalls, crossing the river multiple times and reaching the rim of the caldera before looping back. It had been raining a lot so we were hoping that the waterfalls would be more impressive. They sure were! And the sight of mist hanging in the river valley confirmed that we were in the middle of the rainforest. What we didn't expect is that the river crossings had flooded and were unpassable! We decided to head back.

When we had stopped at the waterfalls, we found another surprise. There were little worm-like animals wiggling on our legs, leeches! After a good old freak-out, we managed to pull them all off. On the way back, we saw them everywhere. They were in puddles, on grass, on the look-out railing, all waiting for their chances to leech on to us. I think you'll understand that we didn't get any pictures of them. Every time we "caught" one, we were super fast to swat, pull, pinch it off before it really latched on.

We also saw nicer wildlife. One species of tree (Antarctic beech - Nothofagus moorei) is older than the split of the supercontinent Gondwana. It is found from Australia all the way to South America. Because much of Australia is so hot and dry, it has retreated to only a few spots of high elevation (relatively cold), rainforest (wet). Getting close to the car, we also spotted about ten wallabies hopping around! They were fast and stayed to the dark bushes. And, on the drive out, we saw a herd(?) of eight kangaroos.

We made a final stop at natural bridge. A river has carved its way through the rock, created a large cavern and formed a bridge made of natural stone. A waterfall plummets into the cavern, and the river continues downstream under the bridge. Cool! Especially going into the cavern and seeing it from the inside.

We drove back to Kim's, taking the scenic route, straight through the Tweed caldera. Yes, you actually drive through the crater of an old volcano (it has a diameter of about 30km). The rim on either side is steep, and the road is slow and windy, but the center is flat and apparently well suited for farming. Even with a few hurdles (flooded river), it turned out to be an awesome day!Read more