Maiala

In the afternoon when Nicole had gone to work I decided to drive up to Mt Glorious and go walking in the rainforest.

I had been looking at a brochure for the D'Aguilar National Park on the way to Coot-tha in the morning seeing of there were alternatives, and saw this but there wasn't time to go in the morning.

I parked in the shade of a little tree and set of down a path which took me through a little rest house into the rainforest. Immediately darkness and silence descended. There were signs warning sternly about disturbing the ecology by doing silly things like for instance taking dogs there, which of course I had not.

The path meandered through the forest then began to descend into the valley. It was quite dark under the canopy of trees and there was a welcome coolness. The previous silence gave way to a pervasive buzzing of insects from some indeterminate place above and the cries of birds echoing through the forest.

Palm trees were intermingled with enormous trees seemingly many hundreds of feet tall supported by widely spread buttress roots. The air was very, very still.

As the descent became steeper steps were carved into the track which was eventually replaced by boardwalk, helpfully the steps were painted yellow for the terminally stupid. The track followed the path of a creek to a mystery destination known as Greene's Falls which I was pretty sure by previous experience would be doing precious little falling, and, looking at the odd isolated and brackish puddle in the bed of the creek - which was decidedly not flowing - I was not to be un-dissapointed.

Indeed as the path came to an end at a lookout overlooking the falls I was privy to that wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-there-was-some-water feeling yet again. Impressive rocky crags fell away beneath the boardwalk into a deep cleft below with tropical trees clinging to the sides all around and above. Impressive crags which should have been veiled in the misty spray of a roaring waterfall, I couldn't help feeling.