RHH's photos with the keyword: dinden national park

Grass Trees are a genus of about thirty species native to Australia. We thought first they were a type of Palm but they are not even related. This, I believe, is Xanthorrhoea johnsonii and was photographed in the Davies Creek area of Dinden National Park in Queensland. It has a very tall flower spike, almost as tall as the tree and was a very important plant to the aborigines.

These are more unidentified flowers from Dinden National Park, though I am not even sure they are actually flowers. They may be just bracts from flowers.

I am not at all sure of the identification of this lizard. Elegant Snake-eyed Skink was the best I could do by way of an ID but several others have come up with better suggestions. If anyone else knows better, please correct me. It was photographed on a Eucalyptus tree in the Davies Creek area of Dinden National Park and I've just called it "Snake-eyed Skink."

The day my wife and I spent in Dinden National Park along the Davies Creek Road was very warm and we decided to go swimming here. The water was cool and very refreshing and the stone bottom made a delightful swimming hole.

"Australia burns!" That was what one of the men who were setting these controlled burns said when we asked about the fires. Taken along the Davies Creek Road in Dinden National Park, this is one of my wife's photos.

This was identified by Fizgig as the Apostle Mistletoe, Dendrophthoe vitellina, a plant that is at least partially parasitic and often kills the host tree. We photographed this example in Dinden National Park in the Atherton Tablelands, one of the few wildflowers we found in bloom there.

This photo was taken along the Davies Creek Road in Dinden National Park, but we saw these all over the drier areas of the Atherton Tablelands. This was an area that had been burned over but that did not seem to affect the insects living in the mounds.

This was one of the areas of Dinden National Park along the Davies Creek Road that we explored. On the maps it was referred to as the upper camping area and it certainly would have been a beautiful place to camp though no one was around. We not only explored the area but swam in some of the deeper pools along the creek with the smoke from the fires that were burning in the park as a backdrop.

The Great Dividing Range runs the whole length of Eastern Australia and divides the coastal lowlands from the eastern highlands. This was our view of the range from the beginning of the Davies Creek road which would take us up into the range from the west.

There were advantages being in Australia during the winter, but one of the disadvantage was the lack of wildflowers. This was one we saw in a number of different places, and Fizgig has identified it as Blue Porterweed, an invasive in many parts of Australia. The beetle is unidentified. The photo was taken in Dinden National Park in Queensland on the second day of our stay.

This picture is from the second day of our Australia trip. We had driven from Cairns to the Atherton Tablelands and explored the area of Davies Creek. While there the employees of the Department of National Parks were lighting fires all along the road to burn the underbrush and rejuvenate the vegetation. It seemed to us that most of the park was on fire but no one, campers, hikers or drivers seemed bothered by it all and we noticed that the fires very quickly burned themselves out. When talking to one of the people involved, he not only explained what they were doing, but made the statement, "Australia burns" to explain the need for these fires. They certainly made a spectacular sight and did not interfere with our day's activities, except that one trail was closed.