Cairns, and the forest

Me next to a King Fern.  I am holding one of its dead branches.

Today, we woke up at 6:00 A.M., and hopped in our Holden, the Aussie-made rental car, and drove to a place where a tour guide in 4-wheel-drive picked us up.  We were the only ones in the car, and the driver/tour guide was really nice!  His name was George and he was from Portugal.  He took is into the Gondwana rain forest, which happens to be the oldest rain forest in the world.  George said it was about 180 million years old.  He explained that he ground was originally under water, but was pushed up all those millions of years ago when the continent of Australia bumped up against the Asian tectonic plate.  The rain forest had huge ferns called King Ferns.  They are taller then me, as you can see in the picture.

On the trip, George also brought us too a humongous fig tree.  This 550-year-old tree started out growing on other trees, sort of like a vine.  Then, the fig tree started taking over the "host tree," and started to hog all the sunlight.  Eventually, this killed the original tree.  The hole you can see in the center of the tree is from where the old tree used to be.  All the little strings you can see are its roots.

The giant fig tree

The tour went until about 12:30, when we had lunch.  Then, from about 1:30 to 7:00, we shopped our brains out.  I got myself some fun little Australian road signs on the way.