The City on the Edge of the Rainforest

This Friday was my first field trip for my Australia's Terrestrial Environment class. Now, this is one of my two favorite classes here so I was incredibly excited to go on the trip, even though it meant a day of missed classes and make up work to do. We bused up to Brisbane Forest Park, which actually is now called D'Aguilar National Park. It is immediately outside of the Brisbane suburb The Gap, so it was about a 30 minute drive from the University. The really cool thing about this park is that it is a mountainous mix of rainforest and sclerophyll forest that is literally edged by the city. So The western portion of Brisbane brushes against rainforest (you can see it above). This is really cool because it means you can get to wilderness really easily from the city. I can't imagine what it would be like to drive 20-30 minutes and be in a National Park at home, I would spend all my time there :) 

Anyway after our short drive, we headed into the Park. Our first stop was the Walk-About Creek Wildlife Center, a small zoo where they have lots of animals native to the park. When we first got there our Professor told us that to be aware that a Carpet Python (which was not supposed to be in the exhibit) had gotten into the Kangaroo enclosure, and was laying there digesting a possum. While a lot of people were super freaked out, I was actually really excited to see the snake because pythons non-venemous and I haven't seen a wild one yet. However, by the time we got to the kangaroos the python was gone. We did get to see a bunch of cool animals that were supposed to be at the Wildlife Center. 

The first animal was the White Spotted Quall (above top left). They are the only extant carnivorous marsupial on the mainland Australia. They are also super cute! The one they had at the center was a baby :) They are arboreal (live in trees) and eat small mammals and amphibians. Unfortunately, the most common death fro Qualls is the invasive Cane Toad, they try to eat these toads and are killed by toxins in the skin of the toad. Just another example why invasives are bad and wreak havoc in ecosystems. Another fun fact I learned here is that the hopping marsupials in Australia are classified in sizing groups. The biggest ones are what we call Kangaroos, the midsized ones are Wallabies, and the smallest ones are Pademelons (pronounced paddy-melon, It's such a silly name). Pademelons (above bottom pic) are found mostly in rain forests where their small size lets them move around a dense forest floor. As you can see above they are really well camouflaged. We also got to see Grey Kangaroos (above top right), and one of them really liked my tutor's (That's what they call TAs here) shoe. Last animal highlight at the center was the Australian Lungfish. I know a lot about these guys because there are a ton of them at the Shedd Aquarium where I used to work in High School. They have a primitive lung and are extremely long lived. My professor really like them and talked about them a lot at the center, and it made me feel nostalgic for the Shedd and Grandad (the Australian Lungfish who lives at the Shedd).

Our next stop was Jolly's Lookout. This was a gorgeous overview of the valley and the distant city. It was breathtaking. We watched clouds roll in over the mountains, and in minutes the view changed from the first picture above to the second and it started to pour rain. It was a crazy fast change. The past three days had been constant rain in Brisbane, so we were really sad, but eventually it cleared. According to the Aussies the supremely rainy conditions last week were normal for this time of year, in fact those rains were late, they should have happened at the beginning of February instead of the beginning of March. The rain actually broke a drought that the area was currently in, so while us American's were wondering where our sunny 80 degree weather had gone, the Aussies were really relived.

The rain stop us from learning about the geology in the area and how the local rocks were formed. Everyone else thought it was boring, but I was super excited (I know, I'm a nerd). We learned that a good portion of the rocks were igneous rocks from ancient volcanoes. There are no active volcanoes in Australia (only continent without them), but there were in the past. So there is a lot of basalt, gradient and diorite in the area. It was interesting to learn that were the different rock types were there were different ecosystems. I knew this from previous classes, but was really pleased to talk about it here because I've found that any geology has been sorely lacking from the ecosystem science I've been taught here so far. One of the advantages of being a double major in biology I now look at everything with a multidisciplinary perspective. When I look at an ecosystem I always think about the geology, and when I think about geology I always ask how it impacts the ecosystem around it. It was really refreshing to get this prespective from a professor here. 

After the talk we were treated to Damper and tea. Damper is traditional Aussie Bushbread that people took with them when they were out working in the bush (Aussie term for wilderness). It's basically dense bread. If you want to read more about it check out my cooking blog here: http://cooking-with-a-k.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/damper.html!

After our lunch, we headed to Boombana to do a bush walk. This was a walk through rainforest (bottom pictures above) and sclerophyll forest (top pictures above), and it was really cool to see one change into the other. We learned about the adaptations that different trees have to different environments. Australia is unique because Eucalypts dominates a lot of the forests here, we we learned about how they are specially adapted to drier conditions, and need fires to maintain their dominance. The walk was really interesting and they feed us macadamia nuts (which are native to Australia)! Unfortunately, it was on this walk that I encountered my first terrifying Australian creature: the Land Leech. LAND LEECHES, they have freakn' leeches that inch along the ground, or launch themselves from leaves unto you. While none of them stuck to me, and if they did they caused no permeant damage, they were still terrifying. I was perpetually hopping from foot to foot every time that we stopped to prevent them from crawling onto me. So no harm done, but still I DO NOT like land leeches :(

Besides the leeches the entire day was great. It was so nice to be able to get out of the city and see some nature, as well as learn about the local environment around Brisbane. We have 2 more day trips for this class as well as Fraser Island over mid-semester break. Really excited to go now!!!