In the morning, Lilach and Daniel walked around the small park, and found a Miner hatchling at the base of a large ficus tree, with several adult family members fussing around it. It looked like the hatchling fell off the nest before it learned to fly properly, and now everyone was trying to keep it safe on the ground. We saw them feeding the young bird, and making frightened alarm calls when Daniel stepped too close.
We drove to the Brisbane South Bank Parklands, where the museum complex is located, and discovered that the parking lot we were heading to was underground, with a 2.2m clearing – somewhat lower than our 3.5m. Luckily, we managed to find a large enough curbside parking spot, paid for 2h parking and downloaded a mobile application (Cellopark – looks like an Australian version of the Israeli app) that allowed us to extend the parking later.
On our way to the art gallery, we came across a statue made up of the word BRISBANE in huge, colorfully painted metal letters. Tamar immediately joined the crowd of kids climbing it, and Daniel and I followed suit.
The Brisbane Art Gallery was very nice. The feature exhibition was called No. 1 Neighbour, dedicated to art in Papua New Guinea. Accordingly, the entrance to the gallery was dominated by a huge work inspired by a traditional Papuan “Spirit House”. We liked the walkway that leads one from the lobby to the main exhibition space, running diagonally through a shallow indoor pool. The beauitful architecture was cleverly used to display some works of painted straw crocodiles. It is well known that art is much more tiring than hiking, so after a short while in the gallery we had to go out and get some food. At the recommended pizza just across the road (“Julius”), a friendly waitress with a heavy Italian accent gave the kids some drawing pads and served us excellent pizzas and good pale ale.
By vote, our next destination was determined to be the Natural History Museum. On the way there we were greated by old friends – huge humpback whale statues hovering above the walkway. Inside, we were all fascinated by a comprehensive exhibition on parasites, which highlighted some of the extraordinary adaptations that these creatures have evolved. Daniel was especially fascinated by the parasitic crab that lodges itself at the base of a fish tongue, connects to the artery feeding the tongue with blood in order to feed on the blood, and in the process killing the tongue and making it shrink and fall, and then functionally replaces the tongue so that the fish can continue to feed and grow… Another exhibition that drew our attention showed huge prehistoric marsupials.
A visit to the museum shop resulted in some presents – a yo-yo for Tamar and a large encyclopedia of Australian wildlife that both kids wanted to share. Before leaving the city we visited the Wheel of Brisbane – a 60m tall Ferris Wheel affording a view of the city from above. At the base of the wheel Daniel spotted a nice water dragon (Physignathhus lesueurii), and was delighted when I caught it for closer examination. We drove from Brisbane to Springbrook National Park, in whose Natural Bridge section there is a cave with glow-worms that we wanted to see. We found a place in a caravan park 30km from the park, arrived there in the evening, and after getting the key to the boom-gate immediately left in the direction of the cave. The 30km way proved longer than anticipated, winding and climbing in the mountains, but when we got to our destination we were surprised to see that we were not quite alone. In fact, in addition to several cars and caravans, there were at least three tourist buses in the parking lot. The glow worms we came to see are in fact the larvae of a small primitive fly. The adult fly doesn’t feed at all, since it has no digestive system, but the larvae entice flying prey by secreting films of sticky mucus and lighting them up with a chemical reaction in their abdomens, much like fireflies do. In the glow-worm cave, many hundreds of such larvae hang from the ceiling, which therefore has the appearance of the night sky, spotted by many tiny blue dots. Our visit to the cave and the way there took on a somewhat comical aspect, as we were surrounded by what seemed to be the majority of the Chinese population outside China, passing us in large groups escorted by guides providing constant commentary in Chinese. On our way back from the cave to the car park we spotted several glow-worms in tiny holes in the mud walls next to the trail, which allowed us to see them up close. When already in the car and ready to go, Daniel recalled that we didn’t read all the information on the board at the entrance, so he and I went there and stood in the cold while I read to him all about the strange fly’s life-cycle and biology. A group of Chinese tourists surrounded us and the guide initially intended to let us finish first, but when he saw it wasn’t going to be very short politely asked if we minded that he explains it to his clients in the meanwhile. So we had a simultaneous bilingual exposition on the glow-worms.
Family Trips 