World of walks and wildlife

By COLIN MOORE

By day the high-rise jungle of Queensland's Gold Coast is just a thin white line on the far horizon. By night, when the small pademelon kangaroos come out to play on the lawn at the Binna Burra Mountain Lodge in Lamington National Park, the frenetic coast is a distant ribbon of twinkling lights, as much a world away as the stars peeping through the rainforest canopy.

Here on the heights of the McPherson Ranges in Australia's largest subtropical rainforest there are no television sets in the lodge guest rooms or lounge. Binna Burra manager Linus Bagley doesn't wear a watch - time is measured by the dawn and evening choruses and a bell that rings to announce meal times.

The 20,500ha World Heritage listed park on the Queensland-New South Wales border, an hour from Surfers Paradise, is an Australia of bush-clad mountain ridges, high cliffs, gorges, tall trees, prolific bird life, and the best network of graded walking tracks in Australia.

There are more than 160km of tracks, all benched and most of them gravelled, that climb to 1160m-high ridges and down through gullies of fern and stream.

I am here to walk the 22km Border Track that runs from Binna Burra to O'Reilly's Rainforest Guest House. Much of the track traverses the edge of the State border and the parks trail system radiates from it.

Tony Walsh, of Tourism Queensland, calls it the "Great Walk" and he wants to see it given the same status as other noted international foot trails.

Walking and wildlife are what bring people to Binna Burra and O'Reilly's, although the trail chosen for a day's excursion may be only a few kilometres long.

As I hear Walsh telling someone on the telephone, these lodges were into eco-tourism before anyone had heard of the word.

Binna Burra was started in 1933 by a group of pioneering conservationists in much the same way as tramping clubs came into being in New Zealand, except that these pioneers built a commercial lodge to encourage people from nearby Brisbane to stay and enjoy the rainforest, its birdlife and its tranquillity.

Bagley, who has managed Binna Burra for five years, finds that guests whose parents brought them to the park as youngsters are now introducing their own children to the rainforest.

The lodge is the first in Australia to get Green Globe certification, an environmental standard for tourist resorts that evolved from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

In the evening a group of youngsters are sitting on the lawn around one of the Binna Burra guides who will take them on an exploration of things that go bump in the night in the rainforest.

Some parents, clustered around an open fire in the lounge and cradling after-dinner drinks, are involved in a quiz game hosted by a staffer dressed like a crocodile hunter.

Bagley's ingenious adventure games to teach youngsters about the rainforest and its ecology seem a tad more imaginative - and fun - than the amusement park games on the coast.

One enclosure is devoted to forest predators. Inside, children, in a giant game of tag, adopt roles of the forest wildlife to learn how they interact.

Another uses water play and coloured balls to show how pollution can kill plants and animals. I soon learn that it is as well to know a bit about natural history as I set off on the Border Track with Bagley, armed with a raincoat and a packed lunch. Bagley is an accountant and resort manager by trade but in five years at Binna Burra he's rubbed moleskins with a fair few university boffins and picked up more than a smattering of knowledge. He knows most of the shrubs and trees by their scientific names as well as the uses that Aborigines put them to.

Snakes are coming out of hibernation. Carpet snakes aren't a problem on the track. "And don't worry," he says, "if you get bitten by a tiger snake - you'll be dead in an hour."

Then there are the spiders. Bagley shows me the clever home of a trapdoor spider. Behind the door the hole is huge and you can be sure the spider is too.

As Bagley says, it's as well to know what to look for. Sit on that spot for your lunch and you are likely to get your bum bitten. I almost feel relieved when, after an hour, he leaves me to my ignorance.

At least this damp day keeps the snakes in bed but it also kills any chance of stunning views into the Tweed Valley.

I stop on the edge of a lookout on the State border, a few metres below a carpet of white stretches to the horizon. Bagley had told me about 350m cliffs and hidden caves where bushrangers and a dozen horses could safely make their home. I grab a sizeable dead branch and throw it into the cloud. Silence. A large rock follows. Still no sound. Perhaps I shouldn't be standing this close.

I am half expecting Australian cousins of the patupaiarehe, the fairy people from the misty heights of Panekire on Lake Waikaremoana, to step from behind the gothic roots of 2000-year-old Antarctic beech trees. It's not too much of a leap in imagination because these ancient giants are survivors from the Gondwanaland that once embraced New Zealand.

And there are plenty of creatures to be heard in the forest, if not seen. There is the unmistakable sound of the eastern whip bird, the confusing calls of an alberts lyrebird, the screech of a green catbird, the scratching of a brush turkey making its nesting mound, and a bush frog chorus singing in the rain.

I walk into O'Reilly's seven hours after stepping out, lunch and snack breaks included. I am grateful for, first, the beer and, second, the sauna and massage that sales manager Catherine O'Reilly offers.

She's a third-generation O'Reilly and there is almost a comical touch to the name tags. There's Shane, the managing director, Tim, the wildlife nut who takes me birdwatching the next morning, and Steve who makes the toast at breakfast. And that is just a few. When you leave they come to the door to wave you off.

O'Reilly's all started 85 years ago when eight O'Reilly "boys" from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales rode north to stake out dairy farms on the McPherson Ranges.

Within a few years the Irishmen were surrounded by a national park and figured it was better to milk folks from Brisbane wanting to get away from it all than to hand-milk cows and packhorse cream cans along mountain tracks.

Life at O'Reilly's is as laid back or as active as you want. You can walk in the forest or go on a guided 4WD tour. Day and night there are natural-history activities, from painting wildlife to spotting glowworms.

And don't bypass the 6.45 am birdwalk. You will see the resort's signature bird, the stunning yellow and black male regent bowerbird, wrens and robins, whistlers and honeyeaters.

And on the resort lawn rosellas and king parrots will settle on your head and shoulders for photographs that down on the coast you have to pay to get in an artificial environment.

Tony Walsh says Lamington National Park is the green behind the gold. It's a nice play on the Australian sporting colours. It also suggests the beach and bush are complementary.

Links


Binna Burra Mountain Lodge

O'Reilly's Rainforest Guest House