Paluma Rainforest

Nothing very exciting happened this week. I spent the weekend miserably working on a paper for Plant Survival. I'm still not done with it. I'm still fairly miserable about it. So nothing to report.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, and I'm leaving for Arlie Beach. I'm spending the four-day break on a sailboat going around the Whitsunday islands, snorkeling, and hopefully diving. I'm much more excited about this than my paper.

As promised, the pictures from the rainforest (and small community) up on Mt Paluma from last week.


Basket Ferns:


Some canopy shots (not too many: I know they're not that exciting.

This one contains a strangling fig, strangling a tree:


Tree with buttresses:

A creek:

An abandoned mine from back before the forest was declared a "World Heritage" place:


A cool tree:


A vine that no longer has a tree and therefore is an interesting shape:


This is a Refrigerator Tree. It feels colder than other trees. I know the picture really captures that.


The major occupational hazard in the rainforest (aside from leeches and ticks):


Cool plants:




Pine trees (not native to the area, or usually this shape- they were in a yard at one of the houses nearby. Paluma's a bit of a summer-home place.)


There are birds in this picture somewhere. Trust me.


And the view from the mountain:


I took quite a few more, but you get the idea.