Mount Warning

Finally we had to leave the Gold Coast and we continued into the hinterland a little further south. Our goal was the Mount Warning National Park.

On the way we stopped at an interesting geological phenomenon: a natural bridge. It was created by the erosion caused by a waterfall. The water formed a cave under the fall and a little upstream a deep pool was eroded. Eventually the pool broke through the cave roof, allowing the water to plunge through the hole in the cave below.

We continued further on our road and almoust missed the State Border which we crossed. We had now left Queensland and entered New South Wales. (We had to set our watches one hour forward, for all states except of Queensland change their time in summer...)

Finally Mount Warning came into view.

Mount Warning is about 1200 metres above sealevel and not far from Byron Bay which is the furtherst eastern point of Australia. Therefore the summit of Mount Warning is the point where the rising sun touches the Australian Continent first.

Of course that makes Mount Warning the most exclusive spot to watch the sunrise. And for us it ment getting up at 2:30 am (in our inner Queensland watches this was still 1:30 am...) and starting to climb the mountain in complete darkness (4.4km).

Well, it wasn't really dark. We saw the most amazing starry sky and the subtropical rainforest on the Mountain glows with bioluminiscence (there are glowing murshrooms and heaps of glow worms). After about 2 hours of walking up hill we reached the final summit climb which is really steap and makes the "big Mythen" look like a childrens Playground...

We reached the summit and saw a already brightened sky.

But for the sunrise, we had to wait about 20 minutes.

But then finally...

... the two uf us, were the first in Australia to see the sun ascening over the horizon. :D
 
P.S. Dave was totally right about my decision: only ex-W4e-students probably can understand what I was referring to.