Road trip 2011 - part 3
After morning tea at Bill and Viv's new house, Connie and Bob returned home while we also began our journey home.
I had remembered visiting Lamington National Park a couple of times as a child, and as it is right on the Queensland/NSW border, thought it would be a convenient place to break our journey. Not taking into account, of course, that it can only be accessed via a narrow, steep, winding road from Canungra. I'm very very glad that road is not a busy one: there are places where you'd need to back out 300m of very winding narrow road, with a steep fall on one side, if you met an oncoming vehicle. Probably just as well it wasn't a weekend.
But the rainforest was just as I remembered it: trees with huge buttresses, intertwined root-trunks of strangler figs, thick vines across the paths, birds-nest ferns high in trees. And birds - lots of not-very-shy birds. Ironically, there are posters up in the campground advising not to feed the birds as they become annoying, while about 100m up the road at OReillys Guest House they advertise daily wild bird feeding sessions. Actually, the birds are annoying, sitting on your shoulders, pecking your nose, stealing your breakfast. But it is nice to see them wandering around the campground, unafraid. There were possums and wallabies too.
Best of all, from Louka's point of view, was the treetop walk. It was constructed as a series of rather narrow suspension bridges, and at the half-way point was a ladder up a tree. It led to a small viewing platform and a further, completely vertical ladder to another tiny viewing platform high above. Louka sped up it, followed close behind by Graham. I wasn't brave enough to climb it myself. And unfortunately I took no photos.
After that short walk, it was back down the long, twisting, narrow, steep road to Canungra, then south again to the Bellinger River.
I had remembered visiting Lamington National Park a couple of times as a child, and as it is right on the Queensland/NSW border, thought it would be a convenient place to break our journey. Not taking into account, of course, that it can only be accessed via a narrow, steep, winding road from Canungra. I'm very very glad that road is not a busy one: there are places where you'd need to back out 300m of very winding narrow road, with a steep fall on one side, if you met an oncoming vehicle. Probably just as well it wasn't a weekend.
But the rainforest was just as I remembered it: trees with huge buttresses, intertwined root-trunks of strangler figs, thick vines across the paths, birds-nest ferns high in trees. And birds - lots of not-very-shy birds. Ironically, there are posters up in the campground advising not to feed the birds as they become annoying, while about 100m up the road at OReillys Guest House they advertise daily wild bird feeding sessions. Actually, the birds are annoying, sitting on your shoulders, pecking your nose, stealing your breakfast. But it is nice to see them wandering around the campground, unafraid. There were possums and wallabies too.
Best of all, from Louka's point of view, was the treetop walk. It was constructed as a series of rather narrow suspension bridges, and at the half-way point was a ladder up a tree. It led to a small viewing platform and a further, completely vertical ladder to another tiny viewing platform high above. Louka sped up it, followed close behind by Graham. I wasn't brave enough to climb it myself. And unfortunately I took no photos.
After that short walk, it was back down the long, twisting, narrow, steep road to Canungra, then south again to the Bellinger River.
posted by Liz + Louka at 10:43 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home