After living in the middle of the big city of Brisbane for a while, I kind of miss the beautiful Australian flora and fauna. We decide to head out by car to the Glow Worm Caves & Springbrook National Park.
In advance I look up the highlights of Springbrook and the surrounding area via Tripadvisor. This also brings us to the Glow Worm Caves. We decide to drive to these caves first, a good hour from Brisbane city center.
How curious I am about this, and how extra special that these animals only live in Australia and New Zealand, nowhere else in the world. When we have braved the hills and hairpin bends we arrive at the fairly touristic place where the Glow-Worm Caves are.
The next tour is in seventy minutes, but to pass the time we can enter the ‘Frog Cave’ for free, where we spot dozens of different frogs. Green, brown and yellow, well hidden among the leaves and underground.
After this we do a small wine tasting, five small glasses for $4 pp, converted about €2.30. We end with the heaviest wine, one with the taste of Australian Christmas Cake.
Finally, the seventy minutes are up and our guide is ready in front of the cave. In and along the water at the cave we see ‘water dragons’, a kind of large salamanders. Once inside, we watch a movie about the glow worm’s life and find out that thousands live in this small cave alone.
They agree with each other who can always provide light for a number of hours, to be relieved by the next group. They make threads, like spiders make a web, and can use a chemical reaction to emit light with their butt to attract insects. Since the females are feeding the babies, they can shine the brightest.
Once in the cave it is an unreal sight, in the pitch darkness we see thousands of green-blue lights. You would almost think that they are regular LED lights, but when the guide shines a flashlight on a few worms, you see that they are really small critters.
We drive on, over the hills, following dozens of bends. Yes, a sign with ‘Springbrook’ on it, we are almost at the second highlight, a large waterfall that opens into a lake with rocks around it.
On the way we stop twice to enjoy the fantastic view, both of the mountains and the sea, and of the city with the high buildings; Gold Coast.
Once we arrive at the park, we park the car and walk into the rainforest. We see a sign with ‘Natural Bridge’, the name of the waterfall, we are now close!
A little further on we can hear the waterfall and as soon as we round the corner, we both realize that the 1.5 hour drive from Brisbane was absolutely worth it. Hundreds of liters of water splash in the crystal clear lake, we take pictures from above.
We descend further and can enter the cave to admire the waterfall from a few meters away, I get such a kick out of this! Here we take some more pictures and look on in amazement for a while.
On the way back I keep talking about what we did and saw today and I look for ways to make it easier to drive back to our city via the highway. This works, and within 1.5 hours we are ‘home’ again, because that’s how the city feels now.
