Curtain Fig Tree, Lake Eacham, and Volcanic Craters

The awesome Fig Tree, can you see all the roots?

Have you ever seen a crazy big tree? Well, I just did. This is the most visited tree in Australia, receiving about 1.5million visitors per year. It is really awesome. It is made up of a network of roots that shoot from half way up the tree going down into the ground in search of water and nutrients. In the meanwhile, they create this splendid view for all to enjoy. The fig tree is an epiphyte, a tree that grows on another tree, not as a parasite, but uses the host in order to get nutrients, water and light. So, to begin this process, a bird dropped a fig tree seed onto the branches of the host, and the tree began to germinate and grow its own roots. The roots reached further into the ground from up the host tree, and then after a while, the whole tree died and fell over horizontally. The fig tree kept sending out roots, which grew in this fixed pattern like a curtain. now, this fig tree is one of the most famous tree in Australia, and I had the pleasure to visit it.

Wallaby Group picture :-)

Beautiful Lake Eacham

After we played around the fig tree in the morning, we went off to visit Lake Eacham. This lake was created when magma welling up from the mantle came into contact with ground water. The ground water was heated up until a lot of pressure was created underground that it blew up all the sedimentary rocks above it, creating a huge crater, kilometers long and very deep, which was then filled with underground water and rain fall to create this beautiful lake. Lake Eacham has such clear waters, that are awesome for an afternoon deep when the sun is at its hottest. The view was so calming, I just wanted to curl up on the grass and read a nice novel. I really enjoyed the lake a lot and was sad to leave it that afternoon. However, our activities were not over for the day, because we visited another volcanic crater, but in this one, the water pressure blast out through granite rocks and caused a very deep crater to develop in the ground, This is the only feature of its kind across the world, because a lot of pressure has to be built up to blow away granite rocks. It was very deep and we could see it from the top. The hole was covered at the bottom with water, and algae made the surface of the water green. We then visited the  water falls in that area and the rain forests surrounding it. The water in the waterfalls was very cold, but as could be expected, a lot of people did take a deep and cross the waterfalls.

Granite Volcanic Crater

After this, we visited the Bonadio's Forest were we went on the river for platypus spotting in the evening. Platypi are very interesting mammals, they are primitive, lay eggs and live in water. They came up at dusk to forage for food, and would stay above the surface for about 10seconds before they disappeared again. I was excited because we were able to spot this one platypus about 10 times before the evening was over. Then, just as we thought we had seen all there was to see in Aussie, we were invited to dinner with this wonderful family who looked after the Banadio Forest. There was crocodile and kangaroo meat to taste for those who were excited by this idea. The people who had it seemed to like it, especially kangaroo meat, apparently its very good. After dinner, we all went out animal spotting at night and saw some wombats, rabbits, wallabies and spiders. We then headed back to Wetherby after a long day out to prepare for the next two days of hiking up Cloud Forest Mountain!!!

Sunset during platypus spotting in Banadio