Australia trip 3

Wednesday, November 17th. Today began with rain, like Monday did. We had arranged to go on a guided hike, but the tour guide was late picking us up. When he arrived, he assured us that, by the time we got to the trail head, the weather would clear. It did. Yea! We had a 3-4 hour hike in and out of the Grand Canyon in Australia’s Blue Mountains. John, with Wildframe, was a terrific tour guide. His area of study is biology, and his hobby is raising orchids, plus he takes tour groups through this canyon more than once a week. He knows about most of the plants and animals there, and is humble enough to say “I don’t know” when confronted with a new species. Truly, the difference between taking the train to the summit and hiking on our own, and using John, was that John drove us from the hostel, he shared greatly of his knowledge of the area, and he was friendly and kind.

There are several canyons that all seem to meet in the middle, and there is an area where mountains give way to table lands. We walked down below the cliffs, which were at about 3,000 feet. I don’t know how deep this Grand Canyon is, but it took us about 2 and a half hours to walk to the bottom of it, stopping frequently to ask questions and take pictures. I wish I could show a picture of one of the orange crawfish we saw. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to get a good picture. We learned the difference in the appearance of the tree fern and the king fern. We learned what iron stone is. We found out that where iron stone forms a layer between layers of sandstone, sometimes a swamp forms above, and then beautiful waterfalls appear below. We saw lots and lots of eucalyptus trees, different kinds, and we learned about how eucalyptus responds to forest fires. We saw different kinds of acacia, and also banxia. We saw parrots and cockatoos, and carrawongs, and Australian crows--which sounded just like cats.

Thursday evening, November 18th. We’re at the Cairns Central YHA, waiting for Pizza Hut to arrive with 30 pizzas. It’s $5 pizza night! Lots of hungry young men and women’s hopes for an early dinner were dashed when the receptionist announced that Pizza Hut was one hour behind schedule. 30 pizzas!

Tomorrow, at 5pm, we will leave for Cod Hole and the Coral Sea (Osprey Reef). Brad will scuba dive, and I will snorkel or laze about on the boat. We’ll be gone until Tuesday at 2:30pm, and we probably won’t have internet access. Have a lovely weekend!