Waterfall...

A day of rest. 

My husband and I realised a couple of months ago that week in, week out, we were too often cooped inside with work never-ending at our fingertips. 

Adventurers at heart, we'd somehow lost our wonder at the world around us, so we made the decision to take one day a week as our day of rest and go exploring. We pack lunch, water and our cameras, before climbing into Luigi (our old 4WD) and heading north, west or south on a journey of discovery. 

Last Sunday we headed north along the highway for about 45 minutes, before heading inland along a dirt track to climb a mountain and see a waterfall. 

We parked Luigi below, in the National Park, and with water bottle and cameras on hand, we began the climb.

 

You can see that fire has been through here by the 'crackling' bark on the Gum Trees...

To get to the base of the mountain we had to climb down to the creek bed...

There are some areas with wooden tracking to help you get across, and others where you need to climb rocks...

It's incredibly beautiful along the creek bed. The speckled sunlight appears and disappears, glistening on the rushing water...

The trees are magnificent; giant guardians of the creek bed...

About 45 minutes later we arrive at the base of the mountain track. It's a vertical zig zag that climbs up the mountain face for another 45 minutes...

We stop often under shady trees to take more photos...

 

...in stare in awe at the variety of ant armies all around us.

Finally, exhausted and squeezing the last drops of water from the bottle, we arrived at the Jourama Falls lookout...

If only I could have captured the thunderous choir of the waterfalls as they each fell, one upon another to the creeks below - it was spectacular!

We were soaked with perspiration, hot, thirsty, and feeling the physical effort of the climb when we turned to retrace our path down the mountain. And yet, buoyed by so much beauty, our descent was slow because we needed more time to examine, explore and photograph...

In so many ways this adventure was like walking through Fangorn Forest (Lord of the Rings) imagining the tall trees looking down on us, turning this way and that as we climbed over rocks and splashed in the creek, always looking upward to gaze into their foliage, constantly capturing their faces in photographs that we can keep forever. 

Climbing up from the creek to return to the start, another Lord of the Rings moment washes into my thoughts and the shutter snaps on an almost mythical scene.

 

Time to leave; we head off across another creek in our trusty Luigi.

What a beautiful day God blessed us with.

I wonder where our next adventure will take us?

Hope you enjoyed seeing a little more of my Australia...

hugs