Pictures.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. Gilbert K. Chesterton

It's really hard to give a sense of the size of anything round Springbrook. The escapement is just the tip that's sheered away. When the mist rises through the valleys the landscape looks Gondawanish ~ primitive, ancient, primeval.

The Twin falls circuit has these huge waterfalls. Walking under them is part of the trail & the water is absolutely freezing! Brrr. This one can be short cutted & I did but Sian & Ditz are in there somewhere.

These ranges are part of the Great Divide that runs North/south along the eastern seaboard. When I'm walking through this rough country I always think out first explorers were ever so slightly out of their tiny English minds.

This is the first part of the Wari Track. The boulders are huge...enormouse...giagantic. You walk through caves & caverns & crevices & it is cold, cold, cold.

The sound of falling water is never far away.

Here's the 2nd of the waterfalls you have to walk under. After rain it's a real deluge.

Yep, every time Ditz caught me on camera I was parked on my butt but Sian lugged her good camera & tripod through here & I spent a lot of time waiting while she & Ditz set up *the shot of the moment.*

No. I haven't completely lost the plot & I'm not communing with nature either. If you are lucky you find crays in the pools all through the creeks. This was a particularly big one.
Rosella. These are pretty common & I don't get too excited about them but they're pretty.

We snacked at the English Tea Garden ~ run by Asians! Ditz was really taken by their floor protectors. Yes. They're tennis balls!
The gardens are pretty but badly in need of a good gardener. The weeds have badly over run the place. It is a strange mix of rainforest creek, English lawns, red Asiatic bridges & great gum trees.

This is the letter box at one of the craft shops. I thought it was pretty cool.
And this is the really cool hat I wanted to buy for Kimba but Sian wouldn't be in it. See, we were thinking of you Kimba. Want to abseil in that wheelchair down some of these cliffs with me?
These big grassy plants are Blackboys. I think these are a great plant & it's unusual to see so many of them in one place.

Sunday we walked part of the Apple Tree Farm track. This is part of *The Great Walk* which runs through the ranges along the New South Wales/ Queensland border, starting up near O'Reilly's & landing down near the Gold Coast. It takes 3 ~ 5 days to do in it's entirety. One day. Maybe.

We found paper daisies in bloom; rare.
The rainforest is subtropical & more open woodland here & it was really easy walking. Almost dead flat. This is where we found a great view looking across the valley & sat quietly in the presence of the Lord. All weekend we felt the Lord's delight in our pleasure. Like any parent he was delighted that we appreciated the treat He'd prepared for us.

Natural Arch. We walked this in drizzly rain but the arch is pretty special. Here's where we really embarrassed Ditz who promptly disassociated herself from us. The tourists were setting their camera flashes in the cave & the flash kills the glow worm larva so I went into lecture mode & told them all what's what! lol. Ditz thinks I'm embarrassing.

It rained & it stormed. The wind blew the tarp out & we retired to bed with fudge & a good book while the wind whistled & whipped about us & we giggled ourselves silly while Ditz wielded the camera like a fiend. When we took the tent down Tuesday morning we found one of the poles almost split in two. We're lucky it didn't completely come apart. That could have been interesting in the wet & dark!