Lamington National Park

Lamington spreads across the high plateau of the McPherson Range on the border between Queensland and New South Wales, its rim standing around 900 metres above sea level only a short distance inland from the Pacific surf of the Gold Coast. Up here the air turns cool and damp, and the forest closes in: subtropical rainforest of towering booyongs and carabeens, strangler figs and tree ferns, and on the highest ridges gnarled Antarctic beeches draped in moss, the most northerly stands of this cool-temperate tree in Australia. Some of their root systems are thought to be thousands of years old. The park is often said to hold some five hundred waterfalls, and creeks such as the Coomera and the Albert begin their journeys in its gorges.

The plateau is the eroded northern flank of the Tweed Volcano, a vast shield volcano centred on Mount Warning that was active some 23 million years ago. Rain and rivers have since cut its basalt and rhyolite lavas into the cliffs and deep valleys that make the scenery so dramatic. Lamington forms part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, recognised for preserving living links with the ancient forests of the southern supercontinent. Wildlife is rich: Albert's lyrebird, regent bowerbirds and crimson rosellas are local celebrities, red-necked pademelons graze the forest edges, and a bright blue crayfish lives in the plateau streams and nowhere else.

The park was declared in 1915 after a long campaign by local conservationists, above all Romeo Lahey, and named after Lord Lamington, governor of Queensland at the turn of the century. Lahey also laid out much of its track network during the Great Depression, famously keeping the gradients gentle; the Border Track still runs along the range between the old mountain lodges at Binna Burra and Green Mountains, where the O'Reilly family opened a guesthouse in 1926. In 1937 Bernard O'Reilly became a national hero when he walked alone into the wilderness and found two survivors of the airliner City of Brisbane, which had crashed in the ranges ten days earlier. David Attenborough later filmed Lamington's beech forests and bowerbirds for Life on Earth.

Getting there

The park's two main sections, Green Mountains and Binna Burra, are reached by mountain roads from the Gold Coast hinterland and the Scenic Rim. The nearest town is Nerang, about 28 km away, which has a station on the railway line between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The nearest airport is Gold Coast Airport (OOL), about 39 km away; Brisbane lies roughly 110 km to the north.