Walking The Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden

Many moons ago, shortly after it was opened to the public, my girls & I did this walk with my mum.  The newly planted specimens were little, the garden raw, the sculptures brusque so while it was interesting & had great potential that potential was yet to be fulfilled. 

 Doing it this time reminded me how much time has obviously passed as things like the gum leaf seats & the stone sculptures have aged & weathered, fitting neatly into their surrounds.

 The infinity pool is an excellent example.  Last time there were great swathes of open ground waiting for the shrubs & bushes to expand & fill all the empty space.  The pool stood out like a sore thumb, raw & exposed, & the infinity symbol perched at the edge of the pool without meaning or purpose. So different now with the pool surrounded by shrubs & native grasses, the sculpture seeming to hang in the air & reflect in the water.

This is a big park with a number of different walks, none strenuous or taxing, lots of open space for picnicking & a huge variety of native flora, though we found the bird life  to be wanting.  We loved the fern walk.  Too dim for good pictures but very tropical & as so often the dense green creates a cool haven.

Sadly there has been little rain & the gardens were very dry & the creek beds valleys of worn rock  dreaming of water. 

Walking Mary Cairncross.

We have been walking through the Valley of the Shadow.  It has retreated for a while ~ but it will be back.   That's what shadows do.

Amidst all the angst & difficulties I managed a week with my own mother, who is in her 80's but robust & healthy.  As I always say when I stay with her & am asked the perennial question: What would you like to do while you are here?  I answer: Walk.

The Sunshine Coast is littered with National Parks & walking tracks, some good, some not so good, but all dependant on having amenable weather. Rain brings out the leeches & makes many of the tracks slippery & dangerous.  Too hot & they are exhausting.  This year we had wonderful weather & on the Wednesday we walked the Mary Cairncross track.

Mary Cairncross is perhaps my favourite walk.  It is part of the lush hinterland around Maleny/Monteville with spectacular views towards the Glasshouse Mountains. These 13 volcanic peaks can been seen for miles along the coast or out @ sea before you are anywhere near them.

I have done this walk any number of times.  It is neither a particularly long or strenuous walk but has recently been upgraded to be more wheelchair friendly. It is home to a huge variety of native birds & always, always I see birds I never see @ home ~ & hear the calls of many more I can't identify.

 Pademelons can usually be spotted if you don't have noisy small children with you.  I have walked this with children but mine were well trained to walk quietly & keep their eyes peeled & invariably it was a child who spotted the most interesting things having sharp young eyes that didn't need glasses! ☺

 The quality of the pictures is bad but we were so excited to see a family of yellow Robins, robins being ecologically sensitive.  We also spotted log~runners, a brown cuckoo & a rose crowned dove, all beautiful in their own way, while we were serenaded around the track by Golden Whistlers, Cat birds & Koel.

 There is a special spot just for the bats.  I have always had a special affection for our native bats since the bitter winter day we rescued an abandoned baby & I learnt how soft & hugely affectionate they are.

 Nests.  No idea really.  Gerrygongs maybe... There were lots of them hanging right beside the track, abandoned of course as most species have finished breeding.

 We completed our outing by having lunch @ the new Resource centre with its wonderful views of the Glasshouse: quiche & salad, so very scrummy.

The updated resource centre is wonderfully informative.  Nests, feathers & exoskeletons are on display & they have several interactive things, including bird calls, which ate up huge wads of mum & my time as we attempted to identify all the birds we had heard but not seen ~ which meant a lot of guessing to start with! Then whittling it down bit by bit.

Our final call was Nambour train station to pick up my niece who is @ uni in Brisbane & spends most of her free time up @ mum's.  Luckily she too likes to walk!

Being taught by the Rabbi.

Amongst all the things I read, watch & listen too  there is, & always has been, a strong Messianic flavour.  The Lord impressed on me early, even as a child, that He was a Hebrew.  Middle~Eastern. Jewish. I understood this even as I didn't grasp exactly what that meant .

I got, over time: prayer shawl; phylacteries; tallit.   I even understood His teaching was from a Jewish place but information is information & I simply absorbed the information.  Occasionally I applied it to scripture.  What I didn't do was apply it to me. I'm western.  AngloCeltic. Maybe the Celtic bit is why I missed something so very obvious because Celts are prone to operate in something of the same way.

See, we live where we live & that has always meant we are on our own when it comes to growing in God.  None, & I do mean none, of the other churches even come close to where God led us.  It has always created difficulties but we are meant to be following Jesus not some church or minister or congregation so there we perched like birds in the wilderness doing our thing & trying so very hard not to draw unwanted attention to ourselves.

So far, so good. Now, @ some point the Holy Spirit began chatting quite clearly to me & me being me simply went: Oh, right, now we are operating scriptually... I know... It never occurred to me people might think that was weird.  Not hearing was what I considered weird 'cause I'd read Acts you know... And what started happening was my kids because, you know, they were kids & they had no idea so I'd get this stream of: mum, would you pray for me about...

There were the dramatic answers: BLUE BARINA. There were the straightforward answers & then there was something odd.  See the kids got bigger & in all honesty they should have been hearing from God for themselves. Instead they'd ask me but instead of getting blue barina answers, or something straightforward, I'd get part of a scripture, often one I didn't know, or didn't know well & I'd have to google Mr Google & find the rest of it & sometimes there was more than one choice.  I can assure you this was more than a little on the frustrating side.  Just tell me already!

When I am super bored & sweltering in the humidity of a Queensland summer, what I do is amuse myself on Amazon reading all the book reviews on subjects I will never investigate ~ or better, seeing what's new in the religious department ~ which is how I came upon Sitting @ the feet of Rabbi Jesus.

Actually there were a number of books I was interested in ~ including The Hebrew Yeshua V the Greek Jesus ~ bits of which are online & very good~ & which I may still get, but I opted to get a book by Christians rather than a Jew, @ least to start with.  After that I watched all the Jewish videos anyway so I have to wonder about me. 

Having started the book I sighed.  It felt a little dumbed down & the first chapter I knew the info & boy do I hate spending money for stuff I already know. Still, I'd spent the money, the book was here & the other book I am waiting on is still weeks away [which is what happens when you order rare books from overseas.] Hmph! And I got my come~upperance. 

Discussing Rabbinic teaching methods, which I thought I knew in a fairly broad sense, the authors mentioned how the rabbis would only give part of the scripture, leaving their disciples to look up the reference ~ & it hit me like a thunderbolt!  Jesus has been doing this to me for years! lol Nothing like being taught by the rabbi Himself!