Mount Whitfield or "Climbing the stairway to Heaven"

Decided to take the children out for a walk this morning so that Tish could have some peace and quiet. One of the sites I have been wanting to visit for a while is Mount Whitfield as there are some great birds in the area. Today though was far more about finding the paths and having a walk.
We found the road that the walks start from but could not initially find the correct path as the whole area is part of the Cairns Botanic Gardens. After a couple of false starts we were off, the path was nicely surfaced if a bit steep in places....

so the occasional stop was called for..

The walk eventually goes off onto the hillside properly but we were not doing that section today. This part was very popular being a circular walk of about 1 mile but despite the number of people sharing the path there was still plenty to see ...

this Australian Bush Turkey was enjoying the sun but moved off when some-one approached
The views were great;

Cairns Esplanade

Take off time at Cairns International

Yorkeys Knob from the south

Out towards the Great Barrier Reef (if you open the image and zoom in you can see one of the Cays or Islands of the reef)

The vegetation up the hill is a mix of both Native and deliberately planted non Native (as part of the Botanic Garden collection) as a result there were a huge selection of trees and scrubs (including the stinging tree) one of the most beautiful which we have seen whilst driving is this one in flower

As you can imagine these brilliant red flowers stand out a mile against the lush greens of the forest.

On the walk up you could hear lots of things moving through the undergrowth, the majority of which were either Orange-footed Scrubfowl or Bush Turkeys but we did spot this little beauty moving through the densest bamboo thicket

There is a Red-Legged Pademelon in the middle of the picture! The thicket was so dark it was very hard to get a decent picture and these are the best I could manage.

As the saying goes though what goes up must come down and so we did

On the way down eagle-eyed Hamish spotted this Laughing Kookaburra

I think it was eying up Cameron as a small snack!

It is a great walk and by popular demand we will be returning again!

Cameron was certainly a little bit concerned when we finished lunch and I looked out the window

The Kookaburra had followed us home [on the fence just to the right of the tree] - was it safe to let him out I wondered?!
This individual was certainly very approachable as well...