We are enjoying our time at O’Reilly’s, however with an abundance of food, it is very easy to put on a lot of weight. Thankfully, there are enough activities throughout the day to be able to work off some calories.
Yesterday (Easter Saturday) I did a 23km walk through the Lamington National Park. We started with a bus ride to Binna Burra Guest House on the other side of the park and then walked around the Border Track and back to where we are staying.
In the early stages, the track was fairly easy as it followed along the ridge of the plateau. For the first seven or eight kilometres along the Beechmont Range, the track follows an easy and open walk through rainforest. Then (when it reaches the area of the McPherson range escarpment) it becomes a little more rocky and enclosed as it traverese the southern edge of the national park. There are many scenic lookouts and this area gets almost twice as much rain as the area around Green Mountains where O’Reilly’s is situated.
The weather was cool and as there was a south easterly wind, it was a bit misty and this made the view through the rainforest appear to be quite erie. I stopped for lunch at Wanungara Lookout and fortunately the mist cleared just enough for a photo to the vallley below.
I decided to vary the return trip and instead of continuing along the Border Track, I took the track which follows Toolona Creek through a gorge. It was about the same distance but a little slower as the track zig-zagged a lot and I had to cross the creek in more than half a dozen locations. It was a very pretty section of the walk as every three or four hundred metres along the track I came acrosss another little waterfall. There were over ten falls of between 4 to 20 metres in height along the track. The last waterfalls that I saw were the very pretty Elebana Falls which O’Reilly’s use on the promotional meterials.
I returned to he guest house by 5.00 pm. By this time I had been walking for 7 1/2 hours and it was starting to get dark under the rainforest canopy. Needless to say, I had an early night and slept like a log.
During my time walking, Jill had been relaxing at the guest house, doing some reading and catching up with the enormous task of fitting a large breakfast and lunch, as well as morning and afternoon teas into one day.
