We’ve spent today on the lands of the Wangerriburra people of the Yugambeh nation. They knew this area as Wonglepong, and we now know it as Tamborine Mountain. We acknowledge the Wangerriburra people as the owners of this land, and pay our respects to their elders past, present and still to come.
We headed off from Landsborough this morning to continue the journey down the Queensland coast. Mum is still with us for another couple of days yet, and today it was Eliza’s turn to travel with her! (Daniel joined her in the car yesterday.) It was about a two hour drive down to Tamborine Mountain, and we had a really good run after leaving a bit before 9am.
The first stop was the Glow Worm Caves. We’d initially decided to stop in here because who doesn’t love walking through a cave and seeing glow worms! But it was such a great experience to learn so much about these little creatures. The Glow Worm Caves in Tamborine Mountain are entirely man-made, as is the rainforest area that they sit on. The owners built the cave with the purpose of being able to create a conservation habitat for the glow worms (who’s numbers are slowly declining), and also to create an opportunity for tourists to visit this controlled environment, rather than visit the creatures in the wild, and risk damaging their environment further. The tour was reasonably short at 30 minutes, but it was still an awesome experience to see the glow worms living life in this cave! Our guide, George, was great at making sure everyone got a good look at a few of them close up in the cave, and even pointing out their little sticky threads that act like spiderwebs to catch insects. After the tour was over, we explored a bit more of their boardwalks, and also a little frogs exhibit they had on site as well.
We headed across to the other side of Tamborine Mountain to the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk. After having a quick lunch in the carpark, we headed in to start our walk through this amazing rainforest that straddles Cedar Creek. All up, there’s 1.5km of track that we walked along – including a long steel bridge as you leave the main centre, some tracks down on the forest floor, and then a long cantilever bridge out to an incredible view some 30m above the rainforest and Cedar Creek below. It was a leisurely walk, and really enjoyable. We spotted a few different birds along the way, and it was amazing to again see the diversity of the rainforest and all the different trees and vines that make their home there. And interestingly, this is the place where Sir Jack Brabham’s ashes were scattered when he passed away in 2014 – I was genuinely really surprised when I saw that!
We’re now at our place for the next couple of days, nice and close to the rest of Tamborine Mountain as well. It’s a very lovely and comfortable Airbnb – a final little treat for us all on this holiday. Beautiful to look out the kitchen window over the scenery between here and the Gold Coast.
