Lamington

Lamington was another great trip, which is kind of blurring together with all the other trips. Everything is flying by so quickly. Lamington National Park is on the border of Queensland (the smart state) and New South Wales, about two and half hours south of Brisbane. It is also the famed location of the animated film Fern Gully.

Besides being in a sub-tropical rainforest we also had with us a world leading expert on glow worms, Claire Baker. She has been studying glow worms in Australia for seven years now (or so) and got to help David Attenborough with the tv series Planet Earth, letting us in on a couple of the filming secrets. Glow worms are creatures that drop down sticky strands to capture prey in caves or near waterfalls and rivers. The worms attract the play by lighting up their rear end using bioluminescence, a process which is about 99 percent efficient. For reference, I think good light bulbs are around 40 percent efficient...

One of the striking aspects about being in a rainforest was seeing the plants fight one another for light. In the areas where there were recent openings in the canopy small trees were racing toward the sun and the surrounding plants were bending toward the opening - pretty cool stuff. Another strategy used by the Strangler Fig is to wrap around a tree, slowly blocking all the light from the tree. As the tree dies a huge opening forms in the middle of the tree, which makes for great pictures.

The other cool part of Lamington was an all day hike up to the peak of one of the mountains where there was a forest of Nothofagus (Antarctic Beech) trees. Nothofagus are ancient moss covered trees that grow up in cool, creepy forests (top of the mountain where it is cool). It is the perfect space to be if you are a mythical unicorn, hobbit, or perhaps an elf. Really a cool place, creepy, but cool. These forests are endangered by global warming, which might take their last sanctuaries (tops of mountains, probably Tasmania) away.

Sunsets were amazing and so were the hikes. Lamington is another great spot on our tour of amazingness in Australia.