SPRINGBROOK NATIONAL PARK

In October 2005 my mother and I traveled to Australia for my brother's wedding. We spent Tuesday afternoon through Friday (wedding day) evening at a cabin at Mouses House. I relaxed in the sauna and spa in that link the first three days.

Springbrook is at 1000 meter elevation, inland from the Gold Coast.  On Thursday evening we visited the observatory and saw Mars through the telescope. It is run and funded by a private person who's hobby got out of hand, apparently. Visit his site here. (I wanted to see the Southern Cross, but he explained that it goes below the horizon during the middle of the night.)

Jay and I did wine tasting at Springbrook Mountain Vineyard across the road, and purchased an outstanding port wine. Unfortunately the owner has just sold the property: A private party purchased the building for a residence. And the government purchased the land to return it to forest.

See this link for more info about the Springbrook area.

Here is the cabin we stayed at. I was in the upstairs loft, and could look out the top window from by bed in the morning, and hear the bird sounds.

Even though it was hot in the sun, under the trees it was perfect temperature day and night.

Here's another view of the cabin. There are no cars near the cabins. Parking is at the top of the hill and they provide carts for hauling luggage in. The trail is visible in this photo. There is no phone in the cabin.

This is Wayne, the owner-manager of Mouses House. He let me use the phone to call the USA. It was $0.13 for six minutes. After the second call I gave him $0.50 and told him to keep the change. He was able to bring up my budgie webcam so I could see my parakeets back home.

Curly is a cockatoo that lives outside the office. He say's "What's Up?" Another cockatoo lives in the tree above it. Once Curly got scared and flew way, but otherwise just hangs out.

They provided bicycles so my mother and I rode down to the lookout and top of hiking trail.

It's 100 feet straight down from here. I hiked about 2 hours into the area below.

Ready to begin hike. I was mostly alone on the trail, but coming back up I passed some groups of hikers.

The hike took me across the top and then under the bottom of Twin Falls.

If you leave food out the forest creatures come to visit. This guy would bang his beak on the sliding door when the plate got empty.

I didn't care much for these guys. They look like "rat-cats," but are harmless Possums.

Jay dropped us off Tuesday, but returned Wednesday evening to start prep for the wedding. Here he fixes dinner.

Friday morning we started at 6am fixing wedding food trays and hauling stuff to the English Gardens.