The Natural Bridge

G'day, mates!

This weekend we decided to hire a car, yet again, and try to hit both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts for some 'much deserved' R and R. My driving capability has progressed rapidly to the point where I can confidently drive in city, highway, day and night conditions. Not too sure about cyclone rain, but then again no one should probably be driving through that!

Saturday on the Sunshine Coast was really nice. The wind was quite strong so the breaks were perfect for surfing and body boarding. So I took out the old boogie board and tried my luck in the waves. When we first got here, Uncle Errik took us to the beach basically the first day and we were shocked at how strong the current is in the ocean. Now it's not as big of a deal for me, but Andrea is still concerned she'll be swept out to sea. Between us, I'm pretty sure she's more concerned that she'll lose her swimsuit top or bottom in the current, but I digress.

Sunday we ventured down to Coolangatta for some beach time, which was terrific despite the clouds, and afterwards we took a short trip into the hinterland at Springbrook National Park and went to see the Natural Arch, or Natural Bridge. Basically a river carved a hole in the rock in such a way that it seems like there's a naturally occurring rock bridge over a waterway.  

The vegetation in these hinterland national parks is the same kind seem in the time of the dinosaurs. As stated in the park, only 0.3% of these forests remain in Australia since the dinos tramped around here, so walking through the dense foliage really takes you back in time to when great beasts roamed this country. I love this kind of environment. Surprisingly, you don't see too many snakes or spiders, but you can really hear the birds chirping away. At sunset we were treated to a massive shower of sound as thousands  some kind of tropical bird started singing before bedtime.






Underneath the arch, even in daylight, is quite dark and dank. Obviously the roar of the waterfall is emphasized in that close space, and even during the day we could see the odd glow worm in the cave.



We bought a really nice portable, travel tripod for Andrea's DSLR and it's great for taking just the right photos. Here Andrea's practicing some long exposure shots to try and get the wispy effect of the water falling into the arch.

Since we stayed at the park for nearly an hour and a half, it started to get really dark and the tour groups started pouring in to see the glow worms at night. We had purchased a flashlight, I mean torch, earlier that day and figured what the heck, let's go back down. We went the quicker way to beat the tourists and were treated to quite a site. Thousands of little lights all over the cave ceiling and wall. Little blue dots were everywhere...but so were the bats! Andrea was a little hesitant to explore the now pitch black cavern with little bats flying at a million miles an hour out of the cave, but since I'm hella brave, Andrea followed me in. We tried to get the best photos we could, but it is pitch black. The worms aren't really that squiggly, that's just the artifacts of a shaky hand, but they are tiny little cylinders of light, which is pretty cool. Hopefully we'll see even better glow worm caves on our trip to New Zealand! Sorry, Andrea, but I think there will be lots of bats there as well. :)