When the cotton balls
are open, the plant will be sprayed dead, so
the leaves will fall off. The picking
machines can then harvest the cotton balls.
In the pouring rain we reached Gayndah,
the citrus capital of Australia. The famous
Gaypack (what's in a name!) mandarins are
grown here. The last part of the trip it
rained and in the night thunderstorms and
lightning strikes kept us awake for a while.
But it was a good sign, we were in the
frontal system between hot and cooler
weather. Next morning the weather
indeed has changed. It's cloudy and a cool
26ºC. So the morning run is very
comfortable. However we decide to run up a
lookout, the top of an old volcano. Running
uphill does kill you indeed. We see many
ants there. At the top we see thousand of
bug wings scattered around. The bugs were
attracted by a high-power light on the hill
and died there. The ants are taking apart
the bugs, but leave only one pair of wings,
that seem of no use for them. Indeed we see
everywhere ants dragging bug parts to their
nests. Interesting to see how animals as
well quickly can adapt to a high-tech
man-made environment. We have four days
to go till we have to drop off our camper
and still about 1600 kms to go. With regret
we have to decide to ignore all the
interesting things en route, but plan go to
the coast south of Brisbane, as we did not
see this part of Australia until now. It
must be interesting, that moderate climate
rainforest there. The landscape was
nice. At first rolling later flat terrain
and near Brisbane again steep hills. This
was the first day that we could drive
without air-conditioning. At first we had an
overcast, later it was sunny again.
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