Just the facts

This morning... cold. Last night.... colder. This morning's sunrise made up for all of it.

It really is a shame that we didn't do Binna Burra last year... it's an incredible place. Being a rainforest, it reminds me quite a bit of Costa Rica. However, no mosquitoes. Perfect? Yes. Oh, and minor detail: we got a hot and cold breakfast today... not to mention that we had lunch provided as well.

This morning after breakfast I had the chance to check out the bawer bird's nest which was, as suspected, a perfect “U” shape surrounded by blue items. It seemed odd that there was a high concentration of equal packets in such a tiny spot and that it wasn't humans that did it.

One thing Binna Burra has that I failed to mention is the most AWESOME playground ever. I would notice this. It's like an obstacle course.. but cooler. It's all-nat-ur-al with wooden fencing and looks akin to a maze.. crossed with a teepee. And I never got the time to play on it.

Barry Davies, our field guide, brought along his son, Matt, to help with the hikes. He grew up here on the Gold Coast and is doing a Master's degree working on bird calls. Pretty schnifty.

We broke up into two groups, Bob and I with Matt and Silvia with Barry. We slowly eased into the forest with Matt leading the crew, pointing out the strangler fig trees and buttress trees along the way. One strangler fig in particular had successfully killed its victim tree. The tree it previously enclosed had rotted out under it and left behind was a perfectly hollow strangler fig. Another photo that I have on here is of me inside a buttress tree that is just MASSIVE. It's a lot like the foliage in CR. 

 

Matt also showed us a trap door spider's lair before stopping to tell us about some more unique critters like the marsupial frog (everything is a marsupial here.. even the amphibians) where the male has pockets to carry the tadpoles until they emerge as teeeennnnyyy little frogs. See what I did there? Heh. Bio humor.

A short snack later gave us our first chance to get a good group photo! 

 

Continuing our hike, it was interesting to see the foliage change from the vines to ferns. It started to look a lot like New Zealand. I can't wait.

We stopped at the Coomera Falls where we ate lunch. Meanwhile, the southerners (Spencer and Kyle) decided to splash about in the freezing cold stream. Joey took it to the next level and completely dove underwater. Eventually the team ended in success.. and pinched fingers.

Fun fact time! Some birds we encountered were the log runners which use their study tail to create a tripod which enables them to dig much more vigorously. Another is the lyrebird, boasting the loudest call of the birds here. It's a songbird that makes the most exquisite music. We were very fortunate and since I lagged behind with Barry he pointed these species out to me and a few others that were in the back of the crowd on our return hike.

High priority was a shower.. and then with wet hair we went tramping about looking for the duckbill platypus. AND WE FOUND ONE. The little bugger came quite close to us but didn't hang around long. Switching species, we then tracked down a flying fox colony and counted them as they left the roost.. in the thousands.

Later tonight after watching the “Queen of Trees” about figs.. and wasps.. we saw a bulldog ant (UGLY) that Barry had caught. I hope I never seen one without the plastic bag barrier.

Barry and Matt led us around the area where we spotted pademelons, a (cuter) possum, a tawny frogmouth, and some other small marsupial that I can't recall the name of.

Delving deeper into the forest, we found no less than five funnel web spider residences. We spent about 20 minutes taunting them with beetles and other insects but no such luck. Amazing how we were within inches of the world's deadliest spider. Not one, but five of them. FIVE. That's enough to kill me five times. Australia is awesome.

A ten hour bus ride and no internet connection awaits tomorrow... and the next few days. Yipee!