Saturday 20th June - Innot

Saturday 20^th June

On Saturday we drove to Innot and played in their hot springs. The hot springs have algae in. 

This is me in the hot springs.

This is some with algae in. 

After the hot springs we drove to Cairns but on the way we stopped at 2 rain forest walks. In the first rainforest walk was long and the rainforest it is in has cassowaries in. The other 1 used to have cassowaries in and was short.

This is a stag horn fern.

This is me with a waterfall.

This is a weird pink leaf. 

Mum's note:

Before we left Mt. Surprise we waved off the Savannahlander train as it left the station first thing in the morning.

The Savannahlander train on its way back to Cairns.

The termite mounds in this region are different again. Suddenly the termites are building massive boulder-shaped nests.

The termite mounds around the Innot region are huge and boulder shaped.

The Innot Springs are the result of water getting into a fault line and being heated by proximity to the magma chamber 600m below ground. The water can be over 70ºC at the source.

Steam rising off a hotter part of Innot Hot Springs.

On the way to the rainforest we stopped at a wind-powered electricity farm. This is owned by a group of local farmers and you can get spectacularly close to the windmills at the lookout.

Two windmills making electricity at Windy Hill. 

The first rainforest walk was at Mt. Hypipamee. The walk went past Dinner Falls (pictured with Isabel) and the Mt. Hypipamee diatreme, which is a volcanic pipe caused by a gas explosion rather than a lava eruption. The crater is filled with water.

Mt. Hypipamee crater. The green is duck weed or similar, not algae. 

Why did the bush turkey cross the road?

The second rainforest walk was 2km out of Yungaburra at the Curtain Fig. This is an amazing tree, a strangler species that has killed its host tree. The host tree has subsequently fallen over and lodged in another tree at an angle. The strangler fig has then continued to grow at this angle, smothered the second tree and send down roots to form a massive curtain. The host trees are long gone, rotted away.

The Curtain Fig is huge!

We are now in Cairns. The geckos have changed shape. They have much longer tails here.