We take a while today to clean parrot poo off the van. A flock of them gather in the trees in the campsite and they have left their marks last night when it was very windy. We head south today, back to Brisbane and beyond. Neither of us are particularly interested to see the city so we bypass it and continue on to Tambourine Mountain in from the coast. We stop the night at North Tabourine where I get a snap of a Noisy Miner Bird – very common here but quite mad looking.
We are becoming increasingly bothered by bites. The sand flies and mosquitoes seem very persistent. In the morning we stop at the local Information Centre where they have a small exhibition of the more poisonous insects in Australia and ask how common they are. We are told not to worry about the insects – the really dangerous things are the eucalyptus trees. More people are killed by falling branches from gum trees than poisonous snakes or spiders. Camping beneath them is definitely not recommended as they tend to drop branches without warning as a way of dealing with drought.
We stop to look at the Natural Arch and buy supplies at a local store in Chillingham.
Continuing on south we keep to the hinterland through pleasant farmland and villages in the Tweed valley. We find a place to stop near Mt Waring.
