A wet afternoon in the Border Ranges National Park

Saturday was not the kind of day that I would normally go bushwalking. I'm a blue-sky kinda guy but there was no blue. Instead the sky was dull, swirly, grey and the day punctuated by intermittent and often heavy showers. It's been raining on and off up here for the past week - we've had 3 inches of rain so far this month and if the weather guys are right, we'll probably see some flooding later in the week. So Saturday was wet and cloudy. But Taylor needed to get out of the house for a while and the rainforest awaited.
Protected by raincoats and, in Taylor's case, tropical strength aeroguard sprayed liberally on his boots and lower legs, we squelched our way along the muddy Barr Mountain Circuit track. The wetness of the forest gave the foliage a glossy luxuriance, and, even in the low light, the new leaves on shrubs and trees, and the old, fallen leaves on the track, coloured the forest pink, yellow, red. Strong, relentless winds shook and played with the canopy, but underneath, on the damp forest floor, the mood was still, almost serene. Occasional gusts of wind would find their way through the layered canopy and swallow us up in their gustiness, reminding us of the storm that was all around us.
Whip birds cracked their imaginery whips and charming flame robins cheekily flew up to us to check us out, twittering, probably with annoyance, as they bravely remained on slender branches, dripping with slow drops of water. We half-expected to come across a silver-back gorilla, sitting around the next bend in the track, in the heavy mist. We didn't. But it was good to walk in the forest in the wind and the rain.
* Taylor, who had wisely accepted Steve's advice to spray his lower legs and boots with insect repellent, suffered not a single leech bite. Kevin, who didn't, enjoyed the company of 52 leeches, each of which sawed its way into his skin and sucked on his rich, warm, blood for the duration of the walk, before each and every one was bulldozed off with his bloodied thumb-nail.