Nightcap National Park

 Meet Victor, our current HelpXer, again, from France. I left poor Victor stranded at Lismore transit centre last Sunday as I had misunderstood his emails to me and had thought he was arriving last Monday and not last Sunday. Oops. I was on my way to give Cal his final massage from me when I just happened to check my phone and saw to my alarm a couple of texts from Victor like 'I've arrived' and 'Where are you? I had to postpone Cal's massage and head down to Lismore at around 8.30pm to go get Victor. He seems to have forgiven me, however. Yesterday was a brilliant day so Victor and I headed up to Nightcap National Park, 35 minutes from our place and about 15 minutes north of Nimbin. Steve, Cal and I had been to the entry to the park last December but we had never walked in the park apart from some spotlighting that Cal and I did later on. Anyway, I decided that Saturday would be the day that Victor and I explored some of the park. Steve stayed home and enjoyed the house to himself.

 We walked for about 2 hours - the rainforest is very dark on ground level (as rainforests often are) but every now and again there would be a break in the canopy and a plant would be lit as if it were a dragqueen in a spotlight.

 After about an hour the particular track we took wound its way through a drier forest dominated by New England Blackbutt (yep I can read interpretive signs with the best of them). This pic was taken from a big blackbutt that had been hollowed out over hundreds of years I guess, but it was still alive. The insides of its guts was fire-blackened.

 Lovely view at the end of this walk.

An interesting rocky outcrop which I suggested to Victor would make a great climb (Victor is into rock-related activities) but he thought it was more of a stroll than a climb. Really nice afternoon and I shall be returning to do the other part of the walk that we didn't get a chance to walk. We have four, maybe five national parks within 45 minutes of our place - how's that for luck hey. If you enlarge the pic you can see the ocean behind the mountain range.