Adventure Weekend

September 15th-17th, 2006

The program I came with took us on an “Adventure Weekend” this weekend to the table lands. We took a bus about 4 hours north west of Townsville and stayed at a place called Mungalli Falls. We were basically in the middle of nowhere . We got there when it was dark out and there wasn’t another light for miles. The stars were AMAZING. I have never seen the milky way the way it looked up there. The girls and I just looked at the stars for an hour then decided to go watch a movie with everyone else. After the movie, we all struggled to find our way back to the cabins in the dark and not knowing where we were. I stayed in a cabin with three other girls. I felt like I was at a summer camp. We bonded and it was fun ☺

This is the view we had as we ate all our meals

We had our 7:15 wake up, had breakfast, then hopped on a bus down the street to a hiking trail. We were in the rainforest that had been hit by a cyclone 6 months before, so the entire canopy was gone, and all the trees were just starting to flower again. Our guide told us that there were more varietes of species of tree in one square meter of this rainforest than in the whole amazon.

When we got about 100 meters in to the hike a wild turkey hopped out onto the path and ran away from us, then another 100 meters after that a HUGE wild pig jumped out of the bush and ran right in front of us. It was quite scary, but it was fun to see Pumba.

The guide pointed out strange fig trees that start from a seed that was dropped on the top of a tree, then grows down around the tree until it completely strangles it, and kills it, then becomes its own tree. There were also trees with the most interesting root systems. The roots acted like buttresses, they would grow a root in a such a way that it would support itself through each cyclone that went through.

This is the buttress tree


There is no poison ivy in Australia, but they do have Stinging trees, which are small plants whos leaves look like they are furry, but the spikes are just like broken fiberglass. The leaves feel the heat of your body and move towards it, when the fiberglass gets in your skin it stays there for months. There is another plan in the forest that has a sap similar to wax, that helps to remove the spikes. Another crazy tree is the wait-a-while. It is a vine that has hooks similar to a fish hook, and as the wind blows these hooks grab on to the surrounding trees and helps to pull the plant up as it grows. So, those wouldn’t be real fun to have around as you run through the forest…

The best part of the hike was the waterfalls. We saw 3 of them on the one hike, and they were beautiful. The last one we went to was huge, and there was a swimming hole underneath it. The boys went in the water, but I saw some leeches and decided I didn’t really feel like getting my blood sucked.

This is the waterfall


After the hike we went back for lunch and then went abseiling. We got harnessed up, and repelled down this steep hill backwards and forwards. We were gonna go down a rock wall, but because it was pretty much raining all morning, they decided the rock wall wouldn’t be safe cause it was too wet. But that was a fun time, got a nice butt workout walking up the hill after repelling down.

Then the best part of the weekend – we went down the “land slide” It was this massive water slide that went into a tiny pond. It was about 100 meters long down a pretty steap hill. You slid down on these little foam things, and went about 30 miles per hour down the slide – it was AWESOME.

This is the landslide


After we finished on the slide we had a while before dinner so the girls and I decided to go on the platypus walk and see if we could find some plateaus. Well after sitting there for 30 minutes we think we might have seen the head of a platypus, but we may never know – they are much smaller than I imagined though… we did see a cute turtle and an eel though.

After dinner, we had an Australian trivia night. The girl and I were the Blond Sheila’s and we of course won ☺ After that we went down to the water fall to look at the stars and the glow worms. It was the most romantic thing ever! Too bad I was with two other girls….

The next morning we had our 7:15am wake up again, then we bused around to all the touristy spots around. Saw a giant curtain fig tree, which started as a big tree that got strangled by the fig tree, died and fell over on to another tree, and the fig tree kept growing until it hit the tree that it fell on, thus making a curtain. Pretty cool. This is it


Then we saw the most beautiful water fall ever at Milla Milla.


And these two Giant Pines that had a 6 meter girth. They say these types of pines can grow up to a 11 meter girth. And supposedly these were at least 1,000 years old – pretty cool.

So after that we packed up and headed home.