Springbrook National Park

Today, I went on a day trip primarily to a national park and a mountain near Brisbane, Springbrook National Park and Mount Tamborine. Those are two separate things. One, Springbrook National Park. And two, Mount Tamborine. The park doesn’t encompass the mountain. There’s some distance between the two.

There is a Mount Tamborine National Park, but it doesn’t take in the whole mountain and I don’t know if we were even in the park. There are some residences and businesses on the mountain. I don’t think they’re part of the park. But, never mind that. That’s not what this post is about.

After a brief stop to look at a dam, we immediately moved on to Springbrook National Park. I’ll restrict this post to just those two stops.

I’ll cover the various activities on Mount Tamborine in a subsequent post, except to say we’re scheduled to visit a lookout at Mount Tamborine before a late lunch, so I won’t use lunch as the point to split my morning and afternoon posts. It also means that this will probably be the shorter of the two entries.

The tour included lunch at a cafe. When we boarded, the driver/guide, Tania, handed us an information sheet that included the menu. At our first stop, Tania took our lunch orders and sent them to the cafe so our food would be ready when we got there and we wouldn’t have to spend much time over lunch. Which is to say, don’t expect a description of a long, lingering, lunch in this afternoon’s post about Mount Tamborine. In fact, I probably won’t mention lunch at all. In case you’re interested, I ordered the fish and chips.

The Tour Composition

The tour transport was a van that seats twelve passengers. Tania spoke most of the way to the first stop, providing information on what we passed and what was to come. Naturally, I forgot most of it.

Before she started her tour spiel, Tania had us introduce ourselves. One old guy was from the Netherlands. I feel I have the right to call him an old guy without being insulting because he’s my age. I know this because he included his age in his introduction.

Three people were from Quebec; two guys travelling together, one from Montreal and one from Quebec City, and a woman from Montreal travelling alone.

I, of course, am from the next-door Canadian province of Ontario.

The rest of the people were from the United States, with Florida and California represented.

With the introductions done, Tania commented that it was strange, but they seem to get more Canadians this time of year. She didn’t know why. She knows now because I told her. Our winter is starting. “Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting that our summers are your winters.”

According to Tanya, if it gets down to freezing in Brisbane in the winter that’s a freakish condition. So I question her claim of them having winters. That’s not real winter.

Apropos of nothing, the small company that runs the tour calls itself “Bums on Seats.” I don’t know. Maybe it has a different connotation here, but if I had a tour company there’s no way I’d call it that. Back home, that’s usually a term that is dismissive of customers. “All we care about is putting bums in seats,” i.e., getting revenue.

Hinz Dam

Our first brief stop was just outside Springbrook National Park, at Hinz Dam. To be honest, I didn’t see the damned dam. I just saw the lake that formed due to it.

The lake is peacefully scenic, surrounded by graceful trees and a couple of tree cemeteries.

About those tree cemeteries, according to Tania, trees grow during dry spells. But when heavy rains come, the lake rises and drowns the trees. But by then, they have already formed enough of a root system that they don’t topple. Hence, there are clumps of standing dead trees that the locals, or at least Tania, call tree cemeteries.

Natural Bridge in Springbrook National Park

Our only stop in Springbrook National Park was at the site of a natural bridge. Getting to the natural bridge and back to the van involved spending about 45 minutes walking on a circle trail through a beautiful rainforest.

The trail is well-paved. There are some stairs, but not bad. And that 45 minutes included stops to take in the views. So walking consumed less time than that. What I’m trying to say is that it was an easy walk.

At the start of the path is an exceptionally tall dead tree. It was murdered. The tree is almost entirely encased by strangler figs. They look like thick, unbending vines that twist around the tree trunk and branches. When overgrown, the strangler figs starve the tree of light and nutrients, killing it.

I got the above information from Tania. Wikipedia tells me that “strangler fig” is the common name for many of the plants in the genus Ficus, which includes banyans.

There was another tree in the process of being strangled, but the Springbrook National Park rangers cut some of the strangler figs back a bit to help save the tree. However, the strangler figs continue to grow. I’d advise that tree to get its affairs in order.

(Later today, I saw a sign that told me that strangler figs don’t grow from the ground up like most plants. Birds eat the figs and defecate the seeds onto trees. The strangler figs grow from there. I didn’t know that before today. I also hadn’t heard the term “strangler fig” before today. So, that’s two things I learned today. By the rule that you learn something every day, I’m now a bit caught up on my deficit of things I was supposed to learn each day.)

The walk through the rainforest greenery was gorgeous.

Natural Bridge

After climbing stairs and walking a bit on a relatively flat trail we reached the natural bridge.

It is a large outcrop of black basalt rock from a long-ago volcanic eruption. Water from a creek eventually ate away at the rock creating a cave with a large opening on one side and a smaller one on the other.

The creek still flows over the rock, down through the smaller hole, into a small pool in the cave, and continues its journey from there.

We first saw the falls from on high, looking through the big hole at the front of the cave. Then we walked down and into the cave and viewed the falls from there. It is a beautiful sight.

After that, we walked back to the van and Tanya drove us to Mount Tamborine. But I’ll save that for a separate journal entry that I’ll probably post in a few hours.

Stay tuned. Or if you didn’t read this until after I posted the subsequent entry, then, by all means, definitely feel free to immediately move on to it rather than staying tuned. (I came back to this post and inserted a link to that one in the preceding paragraph. Is there anything I won’t do for my readers? Yes, lots. But never mind that.)

Aside

No Worries

I’ve noticed that here in Brisbane the almost, but not quite universal, response to, “Thank you,” is, “No worries.”

They plainly don’t know who they are talking to. Without worries, I’d be an empty shell. I mean, even more of an empty shell than I already am with worries. To be honest, I don’t understand how anyone can have no worries. Seriously. Are they not paying attention?

In fairness, I have on the very rare occasion heard “no problem” instead of “no worries.” But that seems equally impossible. How can anyone have no problems? Then again, that might explain why they have no worries. But I think they’re just deluding themselves if they think they don’t have any problems or worries. Harumph.

But, I’m proud to say that I’m the sort of person who says “thank you” often enough to hear the response frequently.