Sadly we had to leave Flaxton this morning and move on. On our way we stopped for coffee and a croissant at the lovely local French restaurant. The proprietor is friends of Dene and David’s and we had a lovely reception.
We headed straight off from there and back through Brisbane, across the Gateway Bridge and down towards Canungra. there we joined the ‘mountain road’ up to O’Reilly’s. While we have been there a couple of times (29 years ago) we didn’t remember the road as quite a ‘interesting’. Meeting anything on it is a challenge with long single lane stretches. Significant roadworks to widen some parts of the road didn’t help with the traffic flow, but luckily we scarcely met anyone else.
O’Reilly’s described itself as a mountain retreat and is unusual as it is in the middle of Lamington National Park. This is a quirk of history. Originally the government tried to sell this land for dairy farming. The eight O’Reilly brothers turned out to be the only buyers and they cleared some land and started farming it. However, no-one else wanted to buy it, so in 1915 the government declared it all national park. The brothers struggled on, but the formation of the park meant that some people started to visit and the O’Reilly’s realised that bringing people up to the area would be much more lucrative than trying to take their milk down. Apart from anything else, the difficult journey down the mountain probably meant that the milk arrived as butter. So, in 1926 they opened the rainforest retreat. Guests were brought up on horses with the original journeys taking two days from Brisbane rather than the current two hours. The business built up and the rest, as they say, is history …..
We arrived about lunchtime and set off fairly quickly for a walk to Morans Falls – a waterfall near to the retreat. The walk was through the subtropical rainforest with vines and strangler figs prevalent. It seems that everything in Australia is out to get you. With sharks, crocodiles, the most venomous snakes in the world and even poisonous spiders, you need to watch your step. However, it seems that it is not just the fauna which are deadly, but the flora as well. The strangler fig is an example of this and is an amazing plant. Luckily we can move quicker than the fig which takes decades to strangle its host, so for once we are not in danger from it! The fig grows around its host tree, gradually ‘strangling’ it until the tree has died and the strangler fig stands as a plant on its own. It basically just uses the tree as a prop until it is big enough to look after itself.
