!Birthday Hiking!

We celebrated my birthday one day early by going on a fantastic picnic and hike in the Springbrook National Park.

 

 This is Mike Horn, a fellow Cerner expat who invited us to explore Springbrook with him and do some hiking there. He was kind enough to pick us up, and we had a great day of hiking, taking pictures and eating picnic yummies in a gorgeous rainforest, right on the QLD/NSW border.

 

 The first of several waterfalls we saw was making a nice rainbow near the bottom of the 200' plus drop.   (For scale, notice the palm tree, Jeff really zoomed in on it.)

 

These gnarly old Antarctic Beech trees are descendents of the Gondwana trees and are over a thousand years old.

 

 This lookout is on the rim of an extinct volcano that contains most of the park. The mountains here are not very high, but still provide spectacular views.

 

The trail we choose to hike went down into a steep canyon, past multiple waterfalls and back up the other side. It had rained all week the previous week so everything was lush and the all the streams were running high and fast.

 

 

I was glad we had the walking poles Steve gave us. It wasn't a tough hike, but there were a lot of wet, slippery rock sections and the poles really helped. 

   First we hiked across the creek that formed this waterfall, then down into the canyon and past the base of the fall.

 

 Amazing, right?

 

Twin Falls, one of several falls you could climb up and get behind. I scampered back down and snapped Mike and Jeff.

 

 

Some brave and hearty Queenslanders have built first rate trails here. There were bridges over all these creeks so you could watch the water rush over the edge and fall into the canyon.

 

This waterfall came crashing down onto the rocks, kicking up heaps of spray.

 

 

Looking back at the canyon on the way out, there's one of the waterfalls we went behind. 

 

One last look down at the forest canopy from above. I had never hiked canyons like this before, solid trees from the ridge line to the bottom. I'm glad they were able to preserve this ancient forest.

 

Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast.