Another taste of the hot, steamy rainforest in Queensland, Australia, in the hills around Kuranda. It is the end of November and starting to get wet but not so bad as it will be in a month or two. Tall trees reach up to a dense canopy of leaves through which sunshine occasionally bursts with blinding intensity. Up high, epiphytes like the Basket, Bird’s Nest, and Asplenium Ferns are wedged in the angles of branches, feeding on falling debris.
Creepers, climbers and vines twist around the trunks or hang as spiral-shaped lianas clinging to ‘ghost’ branches. Fierce spiky stems and barbed tendrils of Wait-a-While Palms spread among the undergrowth waiting to snare passers-by. The odd bright red flower strikes a vivid contrast amongst the varying shades of green; and isolated clumps of illuminated leaves become gloriously translucent amid the shaded vegetation. There is a fleeting glimpse of a Monitor Lizard as it makes its way through rotting leaves on the forest floor, where striped woody shelf or bracket fungi decorate stumps of decaying wood. This is Djabugay Country.
COPYRIGHT JESSICA WINDER 2014
All Rights Reserved
Lovely photos- the flora of Kuranda and the Daintree is spectacular!
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Beautiful photos, Jessica. A feast for these eyes tired of looking at the grays outside!
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fantastic Jessica, glad we were there in the cool of October!
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Yes, October would have been better – but a great place whatever the season. You are fortunate to have relatively easy access to such wonderful places.
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Thank you, Angie. When it is dull, cold and raining, there is nothing I like better than to revisit photographs of the beautiful, warm, sunny places that I have enjoyed on holiday. Maybe (inspired by your post today) I should pay a ‘virtual’ visit to a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef sometime soon!
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Yes, wonderful plants and very little time to examine and identify everything on a holiday trip – although I did try to photograph everything while I was there (I think I took 8,000 photographs) so that I could re-examine them later and understand more about this most ancient of all forests.
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I love the textures and the small details in the bark and leaves that you have captured. Beautiful photos! Lisa
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You are most fortunate to live in your very own piece of bushland in Australia. I had only the briefest of visits – but enough to appreciate just how delightful the wildlife is everywhere.
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