Saturday, 7 January 2012

A Little More on Sub-Tropical Rain-forest

My last post mentioned the sky-walk at Dorrigo Mountain, which is shown in the first picture below.


From the end one can see lovely sweeping views out over the Dorrigo National Park and most of the vegetation is sub-tropical rain-forest. You can make out the thick canopy of trees in the next photo, all straining to reach the sun-light above.


And, in the distance, one can see the meadows alongside the Bellinger Valley, the Bellinger being one of the smaller coastal rivers in this part of the world. This valley contains part of the Waterfall Way connecting Armidale to the coast - route that we have often taken as the kids were growing up, but no longer so oftern travelled.



The closed canopy shades the ground and when we took the path down to the valley floor the light dimmed markedly, with occasional patches of speckled light like the one occupied here by young Maxwell, who is playing with one of the many vines hanging from the tall trees. On the way down he spotted some lizards and a green tree-snake, but we didn't see one the Regent Bower Birds or another Brush Turkey.


The next photo shows the density of vegetation and the huge variety of species growing together. Just look at the variegated shade of green.


And, like most rain-forests, the trees themselves are host to masses of epiphytes, which are things like  ferns, bromeliads, air plants, and orchids, some of which are shown in the next photo. Epiphytes are no parasitic and do not harm the host tree. 


All in all it's a lovely destination. Come over here and this is one place we can go.

AS

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