Travis im Tamborine National Park

G'day!

Are you doing well? Me, yes. We just stayed at Tamborine National Park for three nights in a row. In two accommodations that are in the middle of the rainforest. When you sit on the terrace, you are essentially in the middle of it all.

Before we arrived at the first accommodation, we stopped by the Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane. Oh, how many cute koalas there were. And of course other animals too...

But I definitely like it better in the forest than in the city. I'm probably like my two older ones.

Of course we also drove around here in Tamborine, hiked a bit, met animals in the forest and saw cool trees again.

Here is the second of our two accommodations:

And there are also funny animals on the premises. I took a closer look at them:

We also visited the botanical gardens here. Woooaaaahhh, there were perhaps many different plants, I tell you. And such colorful flowers!

They had a funny little house there. That's what I call a tiny house. My elders said something about hobbits. But I don't know what that is.

A cormorant was sitting at the pond and was paying close attention to see if he could catch a fish.

There were insects on the surface of the water that could walk on the water. My older ones said that's why they're called water striders. Makes some sense, I think.

And then there were dragonflies that caught the water striders.

And then fish again, the dragonflies caught them.

Then I looked at the cormorant and understood what was meant by “food chain”.

Later, my oldest wanted to go somewhere where you could taste and buy wine because they also make their own wines in the area. This is what we call a winery. By the way, it doesn't matter whether the wine is actually good or not.

The wine grows on so-called vines - although they are not just vines. There are also leaves hanging on it. And at some point, grapes too. Here they were still very small.

Then they tried a little something.

I don't because there's this alcohol thing in it. And they also bought a bottle. It says something about witches on it. That's called "Witches" in German. Hopefully it's a good sign.

It will be available this evening in the restaurant on the premises here, where our cottage is also located. It said BYO on the restaurant - that means (note, it's English again) "Bring your own" - that means alcohol. Here the restaurants need a license if they want to offer it. And because the owner recently changed here, the license is not there yet.

Otherwise the day was very quiet here. We were in town briefly, browsed around a bit and had some coffee. Scones - my older ones remember them from England. Eaten with jam and cream. Looked very tasty.

My oldest had the migraine thing again today and then she's always a little less active, it seems to me. But the break today was really comfortable.

We go straight from our house to the restaurant. It's actually just a few steps through the forest. But there's a big thunderstorm here right now! With lightning - you may remember that I've talked about lightning before - and loud thunder and really heavy rain.

We have an umbrella here and my older ones have jackets. I'm sure I can crawl into a bag so I don't get wet and don't have to be afraid. A large peacock has just arrived on our balcony. Maybe he doesn't want to be in the forest during a thunderstorm...

So, that's it for now. Tomorrow one last day in Australia. We stay overnight near Brisbane. The day after tomorrow we fly back to Melbourne and then on to Manila. And then there's the sea again and diving and stuff like that...

Love from Travis the Buddy Bear

PS: Now we're back from dinner. It was a lovely evening with delicious food and a super nice and committed restaurant manager.

The rain has stopped. On the way back it smelled really great in the rainforest and the frogs and animals seemed to be calling extra loudly.