I’m finally here

So, after spending the last seven or so years of my life with the ultimate goal of visiting Australia and seeing freshwater crocodiles in the wild, I am FINALLY in Australia. And while I am not yet in the right place to see crocs, it’s pretty brilliant. I’m spending my first couple of months in Queensland — I’ve got a week in Brisbane to do useful things like set up my bank account before heading west, but I am mostly spending it exploring some awesome parks, enjoying the sun, and being completely amazed at the presence of fruit bats in a major city.

By far the most beautiful place that I’ve visited in, uh, the past four days, is Lamington National Park, which has some of the most breathtakingly beautiful scenery in the world coupled with incredible plant and animal diversity. I got a leech! I saw giant skinks! It was pretty brilliant!

Lamington was not the only brilliantly beautiful place that I went, though. Daisy Hill Conservation Park has the loudest cicadas I’ve ever heard in my life, while the City Botanic Gardens in Brisbane are basically full of water dragons and cool insects. Mount Coot-tha, which rises over the city of Brisbane hosts some really lovely butterflies, and was the first place that I got to see the incredibly weird and incredibly brilliant bunya pine.