ANIMALS

In Lamington National Park, we saw a lot of pademelons. Now, you might be wondering what is as pademelon?

 photograph Terri Mueller

This is a pademelon, cute right? Pademelons are macropods and marsupials, which means they are related to kangaroos and wallabies. The word macropod comes from two Greek words. Macro means big, and podi means foot, so ‘big feet’. The pademelons are much smaller than other macropods, they are about the size of an American possum. A marsupial is a creature that gives birth to a premature baby and keeps its little one in a pouch until fully grown. We mostly saw the pademelons at night, and every time we tried to take a picture of them, they would run off into the woods. They are so cute!!!

trapdoor spider burrow

One day in Lamington while we were hiking, John Hall pointed out a trapdoor spider burrow.

huntsmen spider

These spider burrows were everywhere on the side of the track. At night, trapdoor spiders leave out strands of silk and sit inside the door. When they feel the silk vibrate, they jump out of their hole and pull the creature into the burrow. The door shuts closed and the creature is trapped inside the burrow and the spider eats it. That is why they call it a trapdoor spider. We also saw a lot of funnel spider webs. Thank goodness we did not see the actual spiders. The only spider we saw was a big huntsman spider that was in our tent. It was bigger than a quarter.

funnel spider burrow

Lamington National Park

Last week we went to Lamington National Park. Lamington National Park is southwest of Brisbane and on the border of 2 states, Queensland and New South Wales. Lamington is a large park in a huge mountain range called the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing Range goes along the eastern side of the continent and goes through 3 states: Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. The Great Dividing Range is 180 million years old (that is way older than the Amazon forest.) The rainforests on The Great Dividing Range are the last example of warm moist rainforest from the time of Gondwana. Gondwana was a supercontinent that was formed 600 million years ago and broke apart 180 million years ago to form South America, Australia, Africa, Madagascar, India, and Antarctica. That is when The Great Dividing Range was born. That is also why some parts of Australia, South America, and Africa have similar plants and animals that you don’t find in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Great Dividing Range is mostly rainforest. Rainforests used to cover all of Australia. Then while we were having our ice age, Australia was having a drying period. This made the outback and desert in Australia, but some of the rainforests survived on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range. The rainforest was able to survive because it gets a lot of rain clouds coming off the ocean to the east. It also has really rich soil from the basalt rock underneath. This area is a World Heritage Site and has lots of rare animals and plants.

       

When we were there, we stayed in a safari tent. The college students had to wake up at 5 am to go on a sunrise hike to hear the birds. I couldn’t even get up to go to breakfast!  Every day at 8 am we had breakfast and then a lecture from John Hall. Then we would go on a hike that would be about 12 km long. Around 12 pm, we would have picnic lunch along the hike (we had to make and pack our own sandwiches after breakfast and take them with us on the hikes). We would get back from our hikes around 5:30 pm and have dinner at 6:30 pm. Then another lecture, then bed. Near where the students were staying, there was a little hangout place called The Cottage. Every day when we had free time we would go there to talk or have a cup of warm tea.

My favorite part of the trip was one of the hikes we went on with some of the college students. The college students were Maddie, Laura, Lauren, Teya, Margot, Eva, and Ryann. My mom and Terri were on the hike too. The hike was called Coomera Falls Circuit and was 17km long! We hiked through the rainforest and many waterfalls. At one of the waterfalls, we had a picnic lunch and went for a really long swim. The water was so cold. At the end of the hike, it started to rain. The rainforest got really foggy, cool, and creepy. At the end of the hike, I was so tired. I had a really fun time hiking with all the girls. My next post is going to be about some of the cool animals I saw in Lamington.