Self-Promotion for Smart People

On the way down to Australia, I read that Australian trees shed their bark and not their leaves like most other trees. Due to that, there is bark everywhere on the ground near trees. It’s weird. You can just peel it off the trees.

One day, I walked through the Botanical Gardens and came across bats sleeping in the trees.

Now, thousands of people walk underneath these guys every day, but it apparently does not bother them. It’s crazy.

In the same gardens, I found a Wollemi Pine.

While there, Aussies would actually ask me, “So, have you seen a Wollemi Pine?” The oldest fossil of one of these trees was dated at 200 million years old. It was thought to be extinct, but someone found one in 1994, and since then, botanists have been cultivating it.

This little guy had a leg span of about five inches, so pretty big.

I was told that this is Australia’s most common spider and that it’s bite is relatively harmless. Nonetheless, seeing one of these just hanging out in a the gardens was pretty freaky.