Mount Coot-tha

We have just passed our two year anniversary of living in Brisbane, my how time flies! Looking back over this blog I realised a couple of things: I've not posted for nearly six months (oops!) and that I've never posted about the wonderful Brisbane Botanic Garden at Mount Coot-tha, what an omission. Given that this blog started life as a blog about the Australian National Botanic Garden in Canberra, I really should have written about the Brisbane equivalent by now.

Strelitzia in the Mount Coot-tha botanic garden, also known as 'Bird of Paradise flower', a beautiful plant often seen in Gardens around Brisbane although it is actually native to South Africa.

One reason it has taken so long to write about the garden at Mount Coot-tha is because it took us a long time to go there again after moving here - on our first visit to Brisbane we had visited the garden and were very disappointed, but it turns out we didn't see hardly any of it as it extends so much further than we realised!  So if you go there and you think its just a small lake with a few flower beds around, you really haven't explored far enough.  For a start, there is also a wonderful Japanese Garden, pictured below, and a meandering rainforest river with plenty of water dragons.

If you are interested in Japanese culture, there is an event on tomorrow Sunday 18th August, in the Japanese Garden at Mount Coot-tha celebrating Japanese Cultural day!  This will include music, a tea ceremony and origami amongst other things, from 11am-3pm, and its free (as is entry to the garden).  

Just be sure to watch out for the many Golden Orb weaver Nephila plumipes spiders webs with huge female spiders as you walk around the gardens...  pictured below is an immature (top) and mature (below) female - the males are really tiny in comparison as this species has extreme sexual dimorphism; the female body length of these spiders is around 20mm, whereas the males are just 5mm.