Big Little Lizards

Today was our last full day in Australia before our Kiwi Run trip and we decided to do the short drive out to the Mirramurra rainforest which sits in the Mountains, slightly inland from Kiama town. We didn’t really know what to expect from this rainforest, whether it would be very good, but had heard that there was a 2 hour walk from the visitor information centre there so thought that it would be a good day out even if the rainforest was disappointing.

We needn’t have had any worries though. The rainforest, surprisingly, was an actual rainforest and as soon as we arrived we could here the humming/buzzing/screeching of the animals in the trees. The type of noise they play at ‘Butterfly world’ in the UK, but obviously not a recording!


Beautiful rainforest

We began our walk immediately which started out on some slightly raised boardwalks. The vegetation and undergrowth was amazing and we spent quite some time walking with our heads down looking for lizards and other interesting creatures, before we realised that looking up is also pretty spectacular! Some of the trees were bizarre with roots almost above the ground, other trees looked like something out of Lord of the Rings and like they may move any minute or start talking to you!

Halfway round the walk we took the slightly longer path which then took you to the Minnamurra Falls. After almost four hours of running in the past 36 hours I was non too impressed to find that to get to the falls, you had to walk up the steepest path imaginable. It was only the sight of Children and large unfit people walking back down (and who must have made it up somehow as there were no helicopters in sight) that kept me going. The falls were pretty and definitely a welcome sight!!

The only disappointment was the lack of lizards on the path as we saw a grand total of one water dragon (impressive nonetheless) on a tree early on in the walk. To satisfy the desire to take more endless photographs of lizards (one of our favourite animals of Australia) we stopped off when we got back to Kiama, under a bridge, where Chris had spied lizards on his walk this morning. Here we saw maybe ten or fifteen lizards. We don’t know what type of lizards these are, they are little, but also big and fat at the same time. It was a pretty productive stop by the side of the road.


Water Dragon


Big Little Lizards

Finally, as you already know tomorrow we are catching a flight to Auckland from where we will be touring the North Island of New Zealand with a mini bus full of other runners.. We’re not sure how much opportunity we will get to seek out internet places so you may notice that our very regular blogging becomes less regular for a couple of weeks. We can promise you though that we will be writing one every day and will upload them (maybe in batches if necessary) as and when we can. Check back regularly!!