Rainforest and Outback

 Marlin and I took a rainforest adventure tour.  The tour covered more than just the rainforest.  We were saw huge cattle farms...where the forest had been cleared; outback arid country; and large farms of advocados, bananas, macadamia, corn and other crops.

Our first stop was a private tea house and restaurant where the original owners had the foresight to keep the rainforest intact.  This tarantula was dead (thank goodness) on the nature trail.

 This is an enormous stranger fig tree.  It starts life in the top of a host tree and sends down roots.  It eventually strangles the host tree and is self-supporting.  This one is called "Catherdal Fig" because you can stand amongst the roots.

The thing is huge!

 We headed down a small paved road that turned to just a dirt road.  This sign proved true.  We saw three rock wallabees.

One stopped and stared at us from behind a rock and could have just been a guy with a kangaroo puppet.  I got greedy trying to get the ultimate shot and missed it.

There are not many flowers in the rainforest at ground level because there isn't any sunlight.  But there are lots of flowers in the more arid parts and at the edges of the forest.

It was an informative adventure.  We learned more about the bats...they are fruit bats and have a special optical nerve that makes them almost a primate.

We saw several snakes....almost everything in Australia is poisonous.  We saw and heard lots of cockatoos which are very noisy.  We saw iguanas...both arid and rainforest ones.

It was a long day of driving.  There were only seven passengers so we had great stories and attention from the owner/driver Kevin.  There was a couple from Prior Lake, Minnesota on the adventure with us!