Rotary Park Rainforest Reserve

A little while back Spencer had a week off from school so we decided to find some fun things to do close to home. Early on in the week we went to the rainforest reserve located in the middle of Lismore and only a couple of blocks from our house. We went on a beautiful day and were excited to see some of the preservation work that had been done to try and keep native plants growing there instead of some introduced plants that are slowly taking over Australia. There are a lot of vines and really big root systems that look like a basilisk slithering under the path and tens of metres away from the mother tree, they're crazy huge. There was a really nice creek going through the centre of the park and we were met with a slightly freaky surprise at the end. I'm not sure if I've told you about all of the bats that fly around the skies at twilight, it must bewhen they start to feed or something. Anyway, we've found where they sleep during the day, and it's about 10 metres above the path in that park. We passed hundreds of fruit bats (aka megabats) that were climbing around trees, flying over our heads and generally freaking me out. As I start trucking out of the park I saw the tail end of a brown snake as well as it slithered down it's hole, further freaking me out. It was kind of an exhilarating adventure, and I am hoping to still go back but maybe be a bit braver this time. Here are some pictures of the adventure as well as some googled images of a brown snake and a fruitbat so you can get full freakiness.



creepy eh?




On either side of that little creek there is part of a giant root of a tree, the water has kept it small, but the root is so big on either side.

Here is a giant root as it curves down to that little creek and then back up again. Ros and I had to take a rest as Spencer spent quite a while trying to capture the essence of the root.




Here are some pictures of the bats, I'm not sure if you can see them really but try to imagine 15-20 per tree and all the noise that they make squeaking and flapping around.

Some shadowy outlines of the bats.