After my confirmation, I got the opportunity to join Sunny and Brett, 2 environmental research students, on their field trip to Nerang River. The Nerang river is located an hour or so south of Brisbane, inland from the Gold Coast.
The purpose of the field trip was for Sunny to find an appropriate location to put water monitoring equipment. One of the positive outcomes of this was that we stopped at many places along the river, including ones which weren’t in the park. It was interesting to see these different parts of the river, some spots looked like they hadn’t received water in a while, others were lush and surrounded by ferns and other foliage.
Whilst on the trip we also stopped off at Springbrook national park, part of the Gold Coast hinterland and one of the sources of the Nerang River. A protected rainforest, Springbrook was populated with lush trees, various fungi, creeks, waterfalls and caves, it is very close to the rainforest featured in Ferngully. One of the unforeseen benefits of visiting Springbrook was that I was able to see the type of environment surrounding water sources. This would be helpful later on in helping me gain a better understanding of the environment surrounding sources of the Brisbane River, some of which are residential, others quite far inland.
Despite being able too better grasp the flora of the region, the same could not be said for the fauna, I wasn’t able to see any mammals (other than humans), fish or invertebrates.
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