New images

Bunya Mountains National Park

Sunrise on one of the grassy "balds"

In the forest, bunya pines have to grow tall to reach the sunlight.....

...On the edges of the forest, they have a more compact shape with a characteristic domed crown.

Barker Creek

The forest floor

Like giant elephant's feet...

Bunya pines

Buttressed trunks

Grass trees on Mt Kiangarow

Girraween National Park

The Sphinx at sunrise, taken from Turtle Rock

A protected corner near Turtle Rock

The opportunist

Up close it looks a bit more like a sphinx....but it's still a stretch of the imagination.

The first Pyramid catching the afternoon sun (does that really look like a pyramid?!)

Black cypress pines growing on a rock bar in Bald Rock Creek.

Twisted and gnarly

The golden blossom of a Wallangarra wattle

I've been coming to Girraween regularly for 5 years now and have built up a good mental library of the photographic options available, so it's exciting to discover a new location to add to the list. This part of Bald Rock Creek (next 5 images) is a little way off the main trails and requires careful rock-hopping to traverse but it has some impressive scenery with big rock pools and cascades of various shapes and sizes. I arrived in the middle of the afternoon so the light was quite harsh but enough clouds were drifting over to provide occasional shade and reduce the contrast. I used a polarizing filter and a 5-stop neutral density filter on all of the images below, to cut the glare on the water and wet rocks, and to give me a longer exposure time to soften the appearance of the water. Now that I know how to get here, next time I'll come closer to dawn or dusk for more even lighting...and maybe time it to coincide with rain so the cascades are really running. Sounds like a plan!