T-Travel Photography
Zdenko Takac & Iveta Takacova
Landscape, Travel & Fine Art Photography
Mt St Helens & Willamette NP
Australia
Lamington National Park
Lamington is a national park located in the lush tropical rainforest on the Queensland/New South Wales border. It includes two sections, Green Mountains in an area called O'Reilly and Binna Burra. We visited O'Reilly section of the Lamington National Park which has got a nice campground near the beginning of most hiking tracks. The 36 km winding and often very narrow bitumen road from Canungra requires care and takes at least 50 min to reach the O'Reillys Rainforest Retreat.
Accommodation
The camping area is only short walk from the park's information centre. You need to book your camping permit online as ther are only limited spaces available. There are 20 unpowered tent sites, 10 campervan sites and 10 great walker tents sites. The basic facilities includes toilets and showers. Only 200m from the campground there are excellent BBQ facilities in front of the Information Centre.
Just to be aware, you can encounter snakes anywhere in this park. One of them lives just beside the BBQs in the hole under the rock. We managed to spot him just as he was getting back to his hole after warming up in the afternoon sun. Another encounter with the snake we had on the walk towards the Tree Top canopies. This time it was a large python eating his prey - possum. The black snake was also spotted nearby in python's near proximity, perhaps trying to get a share of the meal.
Bird Watching
At O'Reill'ys there is the bird feeding arena where you can feed beautiful parrots. Don't be surprised if a King Parrot or Crimson Rosella lands on your head while you are feeding them. Just be careful, sometimes they don't make difference between your fingers and the food and it really hurts when they bite you.