Our friends home is in the rainforest, it started out as a holiday shack 40 years ago and got extended and modified and is still a ‘work in progress’!   It is very peaceful.

These are the views from the deck and the kitchen.

There is no shortage of wildlife, gheckos, lizards, possums, antichinus, echidna and the odd snake, the skin below is from a 2.5m carpet snake.    The birdsong is mostly very musical, especially the Whip Birds but the Cat birds sound like babies crying, not dissimilar from the Crows in WA.

The little town of Pomona is a pretty and quite historic place, in fact it used to be the headquarters of Noosa Shire until quite recently.

At the moment all the trees have been dressed in baby type knitted or crocheted clothes as an anti child abuse campaign.

The town is dominated by Mount Cooroora, people run up here in the annual race!   The track is the light coloured line you can see up the side.

The Sunshine coast is 20 minutes to the east, places like Noosa, Coolum and Maroochydore.   They are all fairly typical of ‘resort’ type places and at this time of year it is nice to relax, sitting watching the beach and river activities over a cappucino. From a nearby lookout you can see how the river meanders to the sea and how large expanses of the forest have been preserved as National Parks – so good to see.

Inland from Pomona the Black Mountain range and behind that,the Mary River valley.   It is very pretty up in the mountains and interesting to see where people build houses!  Here we are at Kenilworth, famous for its cheese factory and other dairy products – the ice creams and yoghourts were popular!

A walk through the rainforest is interesting with the white trunks of the flood river gums and the huge Morton Bay Fig trees.    The Morton Bay Figs are fascinating in that they grow from a small seed case in the top of a host tree and then it grows downwards, gradually encasing and killing the host tree. We saw many examples during this is a walk at Fig Tree Creek along with some birdlife that we had not seen before. We had a picnic lunch with local produce and admired this metal sculpture in the shape of a Moreton Bay root. Poems about rainforest life, the trees and the fauna are etched into the metal as it is part of the Poets Trail that you can walk along through the local rainforest.