Springbrook Summary Sorry about the lack of postings...access to the Internet is limited here in that no-access-at-all kind of way, and quite frankly, even if we had access, we've been enjoying just sitting in our rainforest chalet with our fire and Aussie wine and beer at night too much to do much else. But we’ll get you caught up on the past three days.

We left Brisbane on Saturday and decided to take a detour along the Gold Coast rather than driving straight through to the “Hinterlands.” What did we discover? Two things: one, the Gold Coast’s northern half is littered with hideous high rises and Disneyland-like adventure parks (gag, gag, gag)…and two, the southern half is a delightful bliss of little towns—one of which, Currumbin, is home to Elephant Rock Café where Emmett and I enjoyed our best meal yet (House-made Tofu & Seaweed salad for me and the Bangkok Burger (tofu burger with chili and peanut sauce and all the fixin’s) for Emmett).

After our delish lunch, we headed up to the Mouse’s House and got settled in. And then the rain began.

Our time in Springbrook can only be described as beautiful, wet, mist-shrouded, wet, lush, wet, teeming with jungle floral and fauna, wet, and more wet. We are, after all, in the rainforest during the wet season. But the rain didn’t stop us one bit from doing what we love to do…hike!

Here’s what we’ve been doing the past two days:

Hiked out to Best of All Lookout.
Drove to Canyon Lookout and saw five waterfalls.
Hiked Purling Brook Circuit and the Warringa Pool Track (6 km) and saw a few waterfalls.
Drove through the Numinbah Valley and saw waterfalls.
Hiked out to Natural Bridge and saw one super-duper big waterfall.
Drove to the Queensland/New South Wales Border Lookout…no waterfalls but the bucolic valley vista was a nice change of pace.
Hiked the Warrie Circuit (17 km) and saw about two dozen waterfalls!!

We also have seen pademelons (a type of wallaby), red-bellied black snake, spiny blue crayfish, colorful birds, land mullets (a type of skink), bush turkeys, lots and lots of leeches (I kid you not…they are everywhere on the trail and they get up on your hiking boots and crawl into them and up your legs and yes, there is blood and lots of swearing on our part), strangler vines, shirt-ripping vines (we don’t know their name, just their skill), giant spear lilies, Antarctic beech trees and hoop pines (very old species dating back to the Jurassic age), and lots and lots of rain.

Did I mention we were in the rainforest in the rainy season? Oh, and the Sunshine and Gold Coasts (where we are!) are getting hit with a major typhoon that has dropped (and continues to do so) more rain in two days than they’ve had in four years! We keep hearing, “It never rains here,” from the mouths of locals and we try very hard not to punch them when they do.

Anyway, we’re back at our lovely chalet on our last night in Springbrook enjoying a fire and happy hour (of course). Tomorrow, we hit the road and head to Cleveland where we’ll catch the ferry to North Stradbroke Island…and hopefully dryer, sunnier, less leechy conditions.

Until then, enjoy the few pics (click on pictures for larger view, if you dare!). More to come when the Internet isn’t so darn slow.

Cheers!