Red Peak Station

Red Peak station has a boardwalk which allows walking through the tropical rainforest, without actually touching the ground. The walk is a circular track leading back to the Skyrail station, with display boards along the way illustrating various aspects of the environment.

The major theme of this area is the "fight for light". With as little as 1% of the sunlight falling on the canopy reaching down to the forest floor, plants have developed various mechanisms to reach the light.

The boardwalk heading down from the station, and the first display board, which discusses the theme for this area.

This is the base of a Kauri pine, the tallest variety of tree in Queensland, growing to 50 metres. This photo gives you an idea of the size of the base trunk, by comparison with the boardwalk and display sign. The Kauri Pine's adaptation to the rain forest search for light is to grow taller than other plants.

Looking UP the trunk of this Kauri Pine. Note that there are no lower branches, which would contribute little to the energy collected from sunlight, and would also provide homes to other invading species. To prevent climbers from using the trunk to reach the light, the bark is smooth and slightly flaky, making it hard to gain a foothold for climbing plants and vines.

And up in the top branches, there is an interloper! But it did not climb there. Presumably a seed was deposited in a notch on the branch, and it has grown since then.

This is an example of an epiphyte, a plant which lives attached to another plant, but (unlike a parasite) does not injure the host plant. Obviously they do not need to be rooted in soil. Epiphytes germinate high in the rain forest, closer to the sunlight. They propagate via spores cast adrift in the wind.

There are many kinds of epiphytes, including Basket, Bird's Nest, Staghorn and Elkhorn ferns, and a variety of orchids. This particular example is a Basket Fern, consisting of two types of leaves: the brown, papery ones are nest leaves, which trap leaf litter and moisture, and the green ones which photosynthesise and produce spores.

Another type of rain forest survivor is the vine, illustrated here. Rooted in the forest floor for nutrients, a vine grows up an existing tree to reach the sunlight. This is a very energy efficient way of reaching the top, but probably doesn't help the parent tree.

The view looking back over the forest canopy towards Kuranda.

Onto Red Peak Station
Final Leg To Cairns