Oct 7, 2008

Bright and Early

Big plants have little plants, and so ad infinitum Having gone to bed in an unfamiliar environment, sleep was intermittent, interrupted as it was by kicking legs (Eloise's) and snoring (Mother's) and buzzing (Van fridge) and the ubiquitous bird life.

When we woke up in the morning, fuzzy-eyed, we parted the curtains to see a beautifully green campsite surrounded by forest and staked out by lots of wallabies who were wandering around, some with little joeys poking their little heads out of pouches, munching away at the grass.

So excellent chasing material then.

Eloise was making friends pretty soon but with kids who were leaving so we ate our breakfast and trundled off into the woods.

The Bunya Mountains' claim to fame, other than being the second National Park instituted, it's the single largest colony - if that's the word - or stand - which is the word that all the books use - of Bunya Pine trees in the world, and there aren't many colonies left.

And the Bunya Pine trees are pretty cool, towering into the sky on statuesque trunks with elephants' feet wrinkles at the bottom and distinctive foliage up there above the rest of the rainforest. And they brew cones that weigh 10kg and drop down a hundred feet like rocks so tread carefully in the new year.

We didn't make it very far though, before Eloise's batteries ran out and we had to hoof it home (several hours later as it happened) for coffee and chips and a sleep.

Eloise made another friend in the afternoon who she knocked about with under Grandmotherly supervision whilst I wandered off into the forest and stomped around a circuit for 5km or so.

Did I mention that the day before Mum arrived I hurt my knee inexplicably by climbing up and down steep hills? Well this day my knee was hurting like hell and I wasn't very happy about that, but grinning and bearing it anyway.

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