Springbrook National Park

---

We awoke in our rainforest cabin to find clear skies again (yeah!). Our accommodations are a group of cabins that operate under the name Mouse's House. The individual cabins are named after Snow White characters. We are in the Doc cabin. The cottage offers a deck along the bubbling sounds of Rush Creek! We are situated on the edge of the Springbrook National Park and are set to explore the last bit of rainforest on our trip.

Just a brief drive down the road, we started off on the Twin Falls Circuit which was a 4 kilometer loop trail that took us around, behind and even through several waterfalls. The Temperate Rainforest of at this higher elevation and somewhat lower temperature have more of a feel of the New Zealand rainforest than the ones up in Northern Queensland. All of the trails in this national park were called "circuits". I half expected to see some pull-up bars and declined benches for sit-ups along the way. The Twin Falls Circuit started following a cliff that gave us views of a couple of waterfalls down below. The trail dipped down into the canyon and zigzagged down switchbacks through the rainforest with an occasional interpretive sign. We entered a couple of "caves" that were really just huge slabs of rock that had slid off the mountain thousands of years ago and ended up forming tunnels that the trail had been built through. When we got to the Twin Falls, the trail actually went behind the falls, which were running rather lightly in the early winter. It was a bit drizzly under the first falls but practically dry behind the second. Later we got to another set of falls that we had to walk through part of. Fortunately this passing was brief, so we didn't get too wet.

As we started our ascent from the base of the falls we happened upon a flock of Red Parrots feasting on some berries in vines that had grown around the trunk of a host tree. We got some good views of these amazingly bright red birds. We saw another smaller flock on the rim of the canyon when we got to the top.

After this hike, we took a quick lunch to a park before heading to the Best of All Lookout. The view was a 180 degree panorama of miles of rainforest covered hills rolling their way to the coastline. At the coastline you could see the outlines of the skyscrapers of Southport and the hotels of the Gold Coast. The buildings looked like little Legos on the horizon. The trail to this grandiose view also had some Antarctic Beech trees. These trees were survivors from a time when Australia was still connected to Antarctica. There are very few of them left. Their gnarled trunks showed every bit of their 2000 years of age.

On the way back to the cabin, we stopped at a couple other view points (including Purling Brook Falls) and short boardwalk hikes before settling in for the night. We were home in the cabin for Suzy's obligatory watching of Master Chef Australia which she is going to have to figure out a way to watch from the States. This appears to be quite popular in Australia.

---

Photos

A lot of rainforest
This is a view from the top of one of the falls on the Twin Falls Circuit. It was a bit hazy, so the view of the coast didn't take on this picture although we could see the buildings of Southport and Gold Coast