Breakfast in Eagle Heights this morning before visiting the Tamborine Mountain Botanic Gardens. Developed and maintained almost entirely by volunteers, the gardens feature a unique blend of tropical and temperate flora, including exotic species including camellias, magnolias, and roses, alongside native rainforest plants. The Sooty Owl Creek trail was a particular delight with sculptures and installations of all sorts blending in with the creek landscape. They have done a wonderful job.
Back to the motel for a while and then across the road to the Curtis Falls Track, a nice little walk (about 1km) through a wet eucalypt forest beneath towering flooded gums and into a cool and lush rainforest. Like yesterday's Skywalk, lots of crows nest and staghorn ferns in the canopy. The track finishes up at a large rock pool fed by Curtis Falls. Quite spectacular.
Back in the day (1889), Edgar and Clifford Curtis built a 73m water wheel just upstream of the falls to power their sawmill. For the steam mill to work, the brothers dammed the creek a further 20m upstream each night, releasing it each morning. Water flowed through a flume made of split hollow logs and onto the wheel, generating 10 horsepower, enough to power their mill. Some of the milled timber included cedar, beech, bolygum, hoop pine and hardwoods. The mill closed in the mid 1890s due to poor timber prices and the water wheel was left to be reclaimed by the rainforest.
Dinner tonight at El Burro Cantina.
