Lamington National Park

Lamington National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Lamington lies on a high plateau of the McPherson Range, on the border of Queensland and New South Wales, in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast, about ninety minutes by road from Surfers Paradise and two hours from Brisbane, and it is the finest and most accessible subtropical rainforest in Australia. It has two separate sections, each at the end of its own long, narrow, winding mountain road, not linked to the other by road, and the first decision is which to visit. Green Mountains, the western section, is reached from Canungra, and is centred on O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat, a guesthouse run by the same family since 1926, beside which is the Tree Top Walk, built in 1987 and claimed as the first of its kind in the world, a free suspended walkway of nine bridges, fifteen metres above the ground, with ladders up a strangler fig to a platform thirty metres up.

In the clearing outside, wild crimson rosellas and king parrots land on visitors' heads and arms to be fed with seed sold for the purpose, and brush turkeys and pademelons wander about. Binna Burra, the eastern section, reached from Nerang, is quieter and more of a walkers' place; its historic lodge was destroyed in the bushfires of September 2019 and has been partly rebuilt. Both sections have short walks and long ones: from Green Mountains, the Python Rock and Moran's Falls tracks, of an hour or two, and the Box Forest circuit and Toolona Creek circuit, full days past many waterfalls; from Binna Burra, the caves circuit, the Coomera circuit and Ships Stern. The Border Track, twenty-one kilometres along the rim, joins the two. The day tours from the Gold Coast and Brisbane go to O'Reilly's, generally with a winery, an alpaca farm or Tamborine Mountain and its glow-worms. The park is free.

Visiting Lamington National Park: what you will see

Lamington was declared in 1915, after twenty years of campaigning by a grazier, Robert Collins, who had seen Yellowstone, and by Romeo Lahey, an engineer from a timber family who canvassed the district door to door, and it was named after a governor of Queensland who is remembered, to the indignation of naturalists, for having shot a koala on his visit; the founding date of 2018 sometimes given in databases is an error. It covers 206 square kilometres and has since 1986 been a central part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a World Heritage Site. The plateau is the northern flank of the Tweed shield volcano, which erupted some twenty-three million years ago and whose vast eroded caldera, with Mount Warning at its centre, lies across the border in New South Wales: the southern edge of the park is a line of cliffs, the rim of that caldera, from whose lookouts one gazes into it. Basalt soils and two metres or more of rain a year support a range of rainforests: warm subtropical forest on the lower slopes, with giant strangler figs, booyongs with huge buttresses, red cedars that escaped the loggers, staghorn ferns and vines;

and, above a thousand metres along the cool, misty rim, temperate rainforest of Antarctic beech, Nothofagus moorei, gnarled, moss-hung trees whose root crowns have been resprouting for two thousand years or more and whose nearest relatives grow in Tasmania, New Zealand and Patagonia, living evidence of the old southern supercontinent. More than five hundred waterfalls drop from the plateau. The birds are the attraction for many: the Albert's lyrebird, a superb mimic confined to this small region, the regent bowerbird, black and gold, the satin bowerbird, which decorates its bower with blue objects, the noisy pitta, the paradise riflebird, the logrunner and the rufous scrub-bird. Red-necked pademelons graze the lawns at dusk; the bright blue Lamington spiny crayfish walks the tracks after rain, hissing at walkers; and carpet pythons, land mullets and glow-worms are found. In 1937 Bernard O'Reilly walked alone into the ranges and found the wreck of a Stinson airliner, missing for nine days, with two survivors, a feat still celebrated.

Lamington National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times. The cooler, drier months from April to October are the best for walking, with clear air, fine views from the rim and the lyrebirds displaying in winter, from June to August, when nights on the plateau approach freezing. Summer, from December to March, is warm, humid and the wettest period, with storms, leeches, ticks, mist on the lookouts and occasional road closures from landslips after cyclonic rain, though the waterfalls are then at their best and the temperature remains several degrees below the coast.

The roads up are steep, narrow and partly single lane, unsuitable for caravans, and should be driven in daylight. Carry water and a rain jacket, and tell someone before the long circuits. Allow a day, two with a night on the mountain. Tamborine Mountain is forty minutes from Canungra, Springbrook National Park and its Natural Bridge an hour from Binna Burra, and the Gold Coast beaches an hour and a half.