Coast green patches

The Gold Coast in South East Queensland is known as a holiday destination with great beaches and lots of nightclubs. However the Gold Coast has much more than entertainment for the transient visitor. On Saturday I dragged my very patient husband along for a walk in one of the four National Parks in the Gold Coast region. The park we visited has views of the beautiful bays and beaches of the 'Coast and is very popular both with walkers, like ourselves, and surf enthusiasts with board tucked under one arm as they make their way along the paths to access to the rocks below the headland. This park is known as Burleigh Heads National Park.

In spite of the constant flow of people on the one track around the edge of the headland the bush is quite unspoilt - except for patches of asparagus fern that must have been brought in as seed by visiting birds.

A spectacular feature of the park is the sight of so many huge rock columns tumbled about in the trees and undergrowth. The headland is formed of Basalt. For a long time I understood these shapes to be "Crystals" but basalt is not a mineral so these six sided shapes were formed not by mineral growth but by lava from a long extinct volcano, cooling and cracking.

My purpose in visiting this National Park was to take photos and being fascinated by rocks and minerals I could not resist taking a couple of shots. In heavy rains the rocks are inclined to change their position on the hill so I could not resist taking a shot of the warning sign. Last night there was an exceptionally heavy fall of rain so I would imagine that the park gates would have been locked today to prevent the public from walking past what must be a very unstable hillside.

Tomorrow I will share a couple of shots I took of the wildlife that I saw on this walk on Burleigh Heads National Park,

AJ