Australia's LAMINGTON NATIONAL PARK: A Birdwatcher's Paradise

View of Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia from O'Reilly's

(April, 1999.  Excerpt from my Melbourne diary, written during our three month stay in Australia.)

On Saturday morning Art and I left Brisbane and drove about two hours south to Lamington National Park (a World Heritage site) where we stayed at O’Reilly’s, a family owned guest house perched on a mountain ridge (elevation about 3000 feet) in the middle of the park and surrounded by lush, subtropical rainforest.  We made our way to O’Reilly’s up a narrow mountain road 20 kilometers from the nearest town.

Entrance to O'Reilly's with Regent Bower Bird

When O’Reilly’s homestead first started taking paying guests in the late 1920's  there was no road and getting there was a two day trip from Brisbane, first by train, then by carriage, and then by horse.  We ate dinner one night with an 88 year old woman who had been coming to O’Reilly’s since 1931 and told us that in the early days she made the last part of the journey sidesaddle on a horse!   A full schedule of activities come with your stay at O’Reilly’s, beginning with a bird walk at 6:45 each morning, plus guided morning and afternoon hikes and evening programs.  On Saturday night we went to what was billed as an Australian Bush Dance, which turns out to be much like American square dancing and line dancing.  This is the only kind of dancing I really like to do because the caller tells me where I have to put my feet!

Caroline with Rainbow Lorikeet

The symbol of O’Reilly’s is the regent bower bird, and in the morning these large luminescent gold and black birds will come down and sit on people’s arms to be fed.  So will hundreds of parrots and crimson rosellas.  Dozens of other bird species, as well as pademelons (a small rainforest kangaroo), are also seen around the guest house.  Needless to say, it is a bird and animal lover’s paradise.  For those who don’t get up early, there are bird feeders outside the dining room windows so you can watch the birds as you eat.

Treetop Walkway

Another feature of O’Reilly’s is a treetop walkway, a series of suspension bridges about fifty feet above the ground that allow you to view the canopy of the rainforest at eye-level.  For those (unlike us) who do not have height fright, you can climb another fifty feet to a platform above the trees.  When we walked along the paths on the rainforest floor the trees were so tall we couldn’t even see the tops and in some places the foliage was so thick that it was almost dark where we were.  Also impressive were the giant air plants clinging to the trunks of the trees high above our heads.

By the time we left O’Reilly’s on Monday we were stuffed with good food from their dining room and exhausted from all the activities.  In a little while I will go to the photo processing place to pick up our pictures.  I hope that some of them will be good, but I know already that the photos will only hint at the actual experience.

Air Plants

MORE POSTS on this blog from our 1999 Australia trip:

Brisbane 9/17/12
Phillip Island 3/5/12
The Great Ocean Road 1/23/12
Tasmania:  Cradle Mountain 9/5/11
Tasmania:  Hobart to Queenstown 8/22/11
Alice Springs 7/4/11
Uluru (Ayers Rock) 6/27/11

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