Lamington National Park

Lamington left me breathless. What a magical place.  To spend your day walking in a mist among 40 meter high trees, and then by full moonlight walk through a field of grazing pademelons (miniature kangaroos).

An hour south of Brisbane, we headed west onto a windy mountain road up to Binna Burra, an ecotourism resort on the top of Lamington Plateau. Unfortunately we arrived in pouring rain and as our accommodations (permanent safari tents) were not ready, we and all our gear got soaked.  That wasn't going to slow down our fearless leader, the Terrestrial Ecology Professor John Hall!  He had us all out for a 5km hike in the rain, lecturing the entire way.

 John Hall in his trench coat and hat lecturing.

Team Alpha

Our safari tents were up on platforms, some with tin roofs.

A pademelon hiding at dusk.

The students had an intense schedule of 5 am bird watching and 12 km daily hikes.  It was easy to wake up at 5 am with the kookaburra's monkey-sounding mating call!  But all the effort was well worth it.  The bird watching couldn't have been better. 

 Crimson Rosella

Female and male King Parrots

 Bowerbird's nest.. love the blue decor!

Even the pigeons are beautiful in Australia - the rare Wonga pigeon!!!

Students were busy at field work, measuring the heights of the trees and the percent canopy. Sure beats working in a lab (shhhh...)! 

 View of Egg Rock from our trail.

My kids valiantly managed a 12 km hike, but were pretty beat the following day.  So, we took it easy with a slow 5 km hike to Kweebani Cave, where the Yugambeh people took refuge during bad weather, and cooked their meals during the wet season.

 Tired but triumphant after 12 km!

 Kweebani Cave

 I spy a lace monitor off our trail..

Couldn't resist a little swing on the vines.

Despite the hard work, we managed some fun as well. We had a campfire one night.  I had brought smore-making supplies, OZ-style.  There are no graham crackers in Australia, so we experimented with TimTams (if you don't know what these are, ask any Aussie kid), hob nobs and biscuits.  One of the students started us off with story telling by the fire.. and the night went late with ghost stories and strange tales from our lives.  On the final night we had a Bush Dance!  No one was up for it (physically or mentally) but as you can see for the pictures, we all had a fun time.  The Bush Dances were a cross between square dancing, line dancing and random Australian silliness, we couldn't stop laughing!  Someone (Emil....) deleted the videos off my camera.  Too bad.

On the morning of departure, we had a tour by our Bush Dance leader Damo (short for Damian), who spoke to us about the sustainability efforts at the ecolodge.

Lamington was so magnificent, I may have to sneak in a second trip one weekend!