My God ROCKS!

I'm not sure about our blog readers but the McTavish clan believes in ONE omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (He's everywhere), omniscient (all knowing) CREATOR GOD. He made the world, He has it all under control, He made us and He cares for us more than anything because we are made IN HIS IMAGE.

So a trip into the rainforest is a great reminder of just how powerful He is... This stuff was no accident of cells and time and evolution and stuff. This is design, creation, the work of a powerful God...

We took a day-trip to Paluma. A rainforest villiage at the top of Mount Spec on Tuesday... If you talk to Lion we were Butterfuly hunting, Dragon says Dinosaur hunting, Mummy McT says family time, Wolf says... well, I havent actually asked him but I'm pretty sure he probably thought it was punishment for something horrible he did.

Anyway, I tortured my family by stopping every few metres for a photo of this, that or the other and there were so many I thought I would share the rainforest ones in a seperate post to the family ones. The boys learnt so much about the rainforest by walking through it, noticing things themselves and asking questions. It was a great way to show them how God has created the plants to fit their environment, animals to be sustained by the plants and in turn look after the plants. How a fallen tree is a home and a source of food for animals and other plants.

So here is the rainforest series...

See that tree, the one hidden in the back there with the strangler fig wrapping around it? I couldnt get closer than this but it was so intricate and fancy schmancy.

I got a few photos of this one but none of them seemed right... I just wanted to get a little lower. I wasn't about to lay my very pregnant self down on the rainforest floor, I kinda thought they might just leave me lying there and walk off. So I held the camera at what I hoped was the right angle and *click*... IT WORKED! I know that the strangler figs eventually kill the host tree but they are so beautiful the way they wrap themselves around their host like ribbons.

Just a fun photo... No need to wonder where they developed the faces for the trees in the Lord of the Rings movies... Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? Or perhaps someone is sniffing you?

The paths you walk along are not covered with boardwalks, they are natural and winding and covered with leaf litter. This is in one of the more open sections where the trees are letting quite a bit of light through.


Okay... these were tiny so look close... no, closer... see those little red spore do-dad things on the moss? They were so itty bitty and tiny, 2mm in length tops.


I loved all the moss and lichens and ferns and fungi growing on the trunks of the trees. Like a little miniature forest growing within the forest.


So delicate and soft. We explained to the boys that you don't just go touching every tree because even the trunks of trees are homes for other plants and animals.



This particular tree had this little fern growing up in it's branches, at least 3 different lichens on it's trunk, 2 different sorts of moss that I could see, 1 or 2 other ferns high up in it's branches, it was supporting so much other life.


It's like some kind of abstract art on the tree trunk.

These guys are the size of a dinner plate. They were in a REALLY dark section of the rainforest.


This one was BIGGER than a dinner plate. I loved it's layered edge, each layer was a slightly different tone.


This one was not so huge... only about 2cm across. I think his little white edge was something that was growing on him. It was kind of hard to tell but it seemed to be a type of lichen growing on a fungus growing on a fallen tree... *sings* I get by with a little help from my friends...


This delicate fern is growing up the trunk of a small tree. The tree trunk was less than 2 cm across so each of these leaves were teeny tiny.



I loved this red trunk with the green moss covering it. It's got hollows all over the place where I am sure little animals take refuge. You could see all around it where the scrub turkeys have been scratching around looking for food.



The buttress roots were just as spectacular as when I was little. Lots of support for the MASSIVE trees that they are supporting.


The butresses end right at the top of this photo, they are taller than me by a few metres. Hopefully in a few days I'll have some family photos and some of the buttress root ones have a small McTavish child in them for comparison.

I am hoping to go through some of mums photo albums to get some comparison photos from when I was about Lion's age before I post the family photos.

My biggest lesson for the day was that photography trips to the rainforest should be taken with other photographers, not husbands and small children.