Although it is winter here in the sunny land of Oz, Jon and I figured if we could handle a brisk, winter camp out. It's not that cold; recently my colleagues have been complaining about the temperature. The record low we achieved last week was 12 degrees; that's 54 degrees roughly. It's not THAT cold.
We loaded the gear into the car and set off for Springbrook National Park to see some glowworms. The park is about an hour south of Brisbane in the Gold Coast Hinterland and is part of group of national parks that make up a World Heritage listed rainforest.
As per usual, we arrive just on the cusp of darkness (I swear Jonathan must love to pitch the tent in the dark or racing the setting sun!) and as we are inflating the air mattress, it is decided that it is in fact cold when it is 12 degrees. Since we can't make a fire on national park property and we don't have one of those really ingenious off the ground fire pit things that every other campsite seems to have, it is unanimously decided that we will go have dinner a few kilometers down the road at one of the bed and breakfasts with a nice, warm restaurant with presumably yummy, warming red wine.
Paddymelons was a lovely little hideaway on the hillside and we snuggled in to have a glass of wine in front of the fireplace and enjoy some nibblies. Seated nearby was another young couple playing chess; after hearing a bit of their conversation, I whispered to Jon, "They talk like me!" I generally get excited when I hear the North American accent, even if it is only the automated voice on the train mispronouncing the next stop.
We struck up a conversation and had a lovely dinner together; it turned out that they were backpackers from Canada and their campervan had broken down. The nearest garage to have it fixed that would accept their roadside assistance program was a ways away and they were told it would take a week to get a tow truck up into the mountains to help them.
They joined on our trip to see the glowworms that live on the Natural Bridge at Springbrook. We thought it would be a relaxed little post-port nature walk. Never in a million years did we expect the entire parking area to be filled with luxury charter buses and hundreds of Asian tourists. It was an absolute mob scene.
As we walked down the trail, more people kept streaming up past us. Finally, we queued up to get a look inside the Natural Bridge. The "bridge" is a rock formation that a waterfall eroded a hole through to the creek below. It's quite pretty by itself; we actually returned the following day to get a look in the daylight. Jon really wanted to jump through the hole, but the idea was quickly quashed by moi.
The glowworms were the pretty amazing; I've never seen anything quite like it in my life. Little specks of green glowing blobs all over the cave walls - like an eerie, green starry night. They glowed, we watched and they glowed some more.
We dropped our backpacker friends off at their nonfunctional campervan and drove off to our campsite, snuggled away in our sleeping bags trying to to think about the fact that it was really cold outside.
Finally - around 1am when I climbed in the car and turned on the heat, I was shocked to see that it had dropped to 3 degrees. That's cold. Far too cold to be sleeping outside, however, Jonathan seemed unfazed by it all until he woke up to find me in the car with the heat on. I got a talking to about mechanics and how that's really bad for the the car, but I could feel my toes!
