Camping Trip

I have officially finished classes and just have three finals before I end this semester entirely. The end of classes was good, especially the part where my Biodiversity of Tropical Australia went on a "field trip" to go eat native Australian foods. Nom Nom Nom! Anyways, Australian Unis have a "study break" the week before finals start. I get the impression that I was actually supposed to study during this time, but instead some friends and I went camping. We left last Saturday and got back on Wednesday. Since we didn't have a tent or sleeping bags it seemed logical to rent a campervan and try that out.

A waterfall with a rainbow that we saw along the way

Us at the top of the ridge at Undara

On the first day we drove to Lake Barrine, Lake Eacham, and Malanda. While we at Lake Barrine I walked all the way around the lake and saw a Boyd's forest dragon and what may have been a musky rat kangaroo. Very cool. Also, I head something that I highly suspect was a bunch wampoo pigeons. They are named for their characteristic sound, it really does sound like "wam-poo." We spent the night in a campground in Malanda where we made pasta (a major staple in our diet for the week) using the campstove that came with the campervan. 

The next day we drove to Undara, which you may remember is one of the places I went on my fieldtrip for Biodiversity of Tropical Australia earlier in the semester. On the way we stopped at the Curtain Fig Tree and while we were leaving it a tree kangaroo crossed the road in front of us, very cool! Unfortunately I did not have my camera out and ready for it so I didn't get a picture. This time it was much warmer at Undara so I decided to go swim with one of my friends. We actually met some interesting people at the pool, a geology class from JCU Townsville (the other campus in North Queensland) was there for a field trip so we talked to them and also to some people who were here on vacation. Then we went for a walk. The last time I was at Undara we found a pond with some birds. Since one of my friends is into birdwatching we decided to head down there at around dusk to check out the birds. After that we walked up to the ridge (which has a spectacular view by the way) where we convinced someone to take a picture of us.

The day after that we saw a ton of waterfalls. We stopped at three on our way to the Henrietta Creek Campground where we intended to spend the night. Henrietta Creek was beautiful and we decided to do some hiking. After masterfully evading the stinging trees which were growing across the path we came to a tall and spectacular waterfall with a large pool at the bottom. Naturally we spend the rest of the afternoon swimming around in this pool. It was quite nice. When we were getting close to where we had left the campervan the Cicadas started singing. They were ridiculously loud. After the fact I realized while studying that they were probably Northern Greengrocer cicadas, which only sing for about 15 minutes at dusk. We didn't know that at the time and since we were fairly certain we were suffering hearing damage (it was loud enough to be physically painful) we decided to drive back to Malanda to where we had camped before. When we got there we were starving and made dinosaur pasta. I found this very exciting because I have long harbored an undying love of dinosaurs.

A rock wallaby with its joey

The final full day we drove to Granite Gorge. We stopped on the way to see the Cathedral Fig, it was very large and looked super fun to climb on. Granite Gorge is beautiful and is clearly named after the large granite boulders that make up most of the park. We spent the afternoon clambering around on the boulders and generally being silly. Among the cooler boulders was one that looked like a whale and another that looked like a dinosaur. Granite Gorge is also known for the huge amount of rock wallabies that live there. A few of the ones we saw had little joeys peeking out of their pouches.

The camping trip was a lot of fun and we had great timing. It started raining while we were driving back on the last day. Now I am studying for my finals and preparing to come back to the states. I leave Australia in two weeks!