Girraween national park
Near Stanthorpe, via Warwick, Qld Australia.
Monday in Girraween we climbed South Pyramid. Sunday we walked Castle Rock's class 2 track with a howling 30 knot cold sou'wester. It was great! My old hiking shoe suffered a blow out so I didn't get to push on to Mt Norman after. It was cold and wet but not raining too much during the day. Saturday we pitched the tents and went on a short walk with threatening rain. The first night it howled a squall of storms all night. The night after I got up and walked out to take a pee in the wee hours with a beautiful silver full moon casting glistening dewy shadows on the ground. Monday morning up the Pyramids was sparkling clear and gorgeous.
Birds we encountered included a beautiful male satin bowerbird, a white-throated treecreeper, a pair of choughs (this is a pronounced choffs - they are colonial birds not so usual in pairs but a close identification was possible), crimson rosellas by the dozen, a scarlet robin, yellow rumped thornbills, wattle birds, different honeyeaters, miscellaneous magpies, currawongs, crows, kookaburras, superb fairy wrens in non-breeding plumage, and many different types of small Australian bush birds like thornbills, weebills, white-eyes etc.
Absolutely none of which is pictured below. I don't have a good enough camera for bird photography. The following pictures of the national park,its lichens, mosses, fungii, plants, and its geology, rocks, gullies, ridges and gigantic weathered granite structures were taken with a Pentax Optio S4.
Girraween gallery, Queens birthday long weekend June 2006.