Parklands Conservation Park Nambour: Lemon Tree Circuit

Another crisp early morning at Parklands in Nambour. This time we started further down and parked the car at the end of the road. We didn't get far before we spotted our first bush in flower to photograph.I haven't been able to find this flower in any of my flower books, so if anybody out there can identify this I would be very pleased.

Continuing on we spotted a small flock of yellow tailed cockatoos on our right, making themselves heard before being seen by their loud screeches. Before long we turned off deeper into the forest, like last week it had rained the day before, so there were small droplets on all the flowers.

Melastoma Mel= black Stoma= mouth which is what you get when you eat the berries.

You may wonder how I know all this, well I recently won 2nd price in a photographic competition held here on the coast. I won a beautiful book by Stephanie Haslam on Noosa's Native plants, so now I can put a name to all those lovely flower photos I enjoy taking. Thank you Stephanie!

Flowers were out in full force, we spotted a flowering banana bush, blueberry ash, pale flax lily, lobelia gibbosa (now I'm showing off)

Lobelia Gibbosa

After about an hour we heard the classic chatter of a cockatoo to the right of the track in the casuarinas, but to our surprise it was not a yellow tailed but red tailed cockatoo happily munching on the seeds of the 

she- oak.

red tailed cockatoo

You can see his big powerful black beak and I think he/she has his eyes closed.

The walk took us through rainforest and over ridges with quite a few steep sections. 

After about 2 1/2 hours we returned to the car, it was getting hotter, so just as well. We had a great  coffee in a new little cafe in Yandina main street in I think what's called the Timber hut

Absolutely delish and very popular with the locals from the looks of it.