This time I combined a business trip with a few days off, a weekend and a holiday to see a small part of the northeastern state of Australia. Queensland is more than twice the size of Texas with about one tenth the population. Brisbane is the capital city where we have a Consulate with one American officer and five foreign national employees. There are rumors that it will be closed soon to save money so I thought it was a good time to visit. Queensland is the fastest growing state because, like the USA, retirees are moving to warmer climates. And Queensland is the equivalent of our Florida. Since this is the beginning of winter here, the trip was especially nice for the warm, sunny days we encountered. Queensland's tourist motto is "Beautiful one day, perfect the next". It didn't let us down.
I left with Tom Steele, who works for me, on Monday morning, May 23. Rita had some social event and theater workshop that day so she flew up on Tuesday. Tom and I went directly to the Consulate and started our work. We had two main jobs to accomplish. One was to connect Brisbane to our computers remotely so they have the advantage of electronic mail. The other was to set up two laser printers with devices so they could be shared among the six PCs at the office. We also installed one of those PCs. We finished our job by Tuesday afternoon and spent most of Wednesday training the employees how to use electronic mail.
Rita arrived about noon on Tuesday. I met her at our hotel and showed her how to walk to the main shopping mall on Queen Street. After work I met her downtown and we walked back to the hotel through Anzac Square and some of the other shopping areas. That evening we had a delicious meal at Two Small Rooms. This restaurant had good service and excellent food presented nicely. While Rita played it safe with beef I gambled and had kangaroo and quail for my main course. It tasted good and was hard to distinguish from beef.
On Wednesday Rita arranged a tour by boat up the Brisbane River to Lone Pine Sanctuary, the biggest koala sanctuary in Australia. She fed and photographed koalas and kangaroos and generally had a nice day doing touristy things. That evening we had dinner with Tom Steele, Judy Walcot from the Consulate, and her boyfriend, Dick Durham. We all went down to Pier Nine where I had eaten on my last trip to Brisbane. Once more we had an excellent meal of local seafood. Rita had good prawns while I had a huge serving of Moreton Bay bugs. Moreton Bay is a local body of water and the bugs are really little lobsters similar to the French langoustines. But the Australians call them bugs. I love them and, since they are so expensive and rare in Canberra, I get an order whenever I'm in this part of the world.
Rita and I checked out of the hotel on Thursday and picked up our rental car. We found our way out of town without problem and headed south towards the Gold Coast. This is the name given to Australia's most famous beach resort. It reminds one of Miami Beach, or Waikiki, or Myrtle Beach. In other words it's very, very touristy with high rise condos and hotels, miniature golf courses, go-cart tracks, souvenir shops, wax museums and the inevitable Ripley's Believe It or Not! There is also a Seaworld, Warner Brothers Movieland, and many other amusement parks. It's actually made up of several small towns, one of them really named Miami Beach. We stopped in Surfers Paradise to look at the beach and walk around some. We had adequate Mexican food at a restaurant called La Mex. The setting was nice since we sat at an outside table on a verandah overlooking a marina.
We drove a little further south to the twin towns of Coolangetta and Tweed Heads on the Queensland/New South Wales border. In fact we went to Point Danger (named by Captain Cook) and stood on the monument where one can straddle the border line of the two states. Then we headed inland to the Lamington National Park and our stay at the O'Reilly Guest house.
From the small town of Canungra we took a narrow, windy road up into the park and tropical rain forest. In 1937 a Stinson aircraft enroute from Brisbane to Sydney with seven onboard crashed in the McPhearson mountains in a storm. Three passengers survived the crash. One died while going for help. The O'Reilly who owned the lodge since the 1920's went out to look for them and found the two survivors after nine days. He became a hero and the subject of a recent Australian movie about the crash. The lodge today is run by the O'Reilly family who have been there since the late 1890s. This rain forest is one of the best hiking and bird watching areas in Australia.
We checked into our room and immediately went on a short hike to the Treetop or Canopy walk. This consists of about nine spans of suspension bridges linked together at tree top level. You have great views of the rain forest below. The major large trees in the forest are hoop pines, lignum vitae (second hardest wood in the world) and brushbox. Some are thousands of years old. There are also many kinds of ferns and orchids throughout the forest. Since O'Reillys is the only lodge in this area, all meals are included in your stay. The food is not gourmet but good enough and plentiful. Dinner always consisted of soup, salad buffet, choice of four main courses with vegetables and a dessert buffet. After a large dinner we went on a night hike with young Tim O'Reilly who hikes barefooted. With spotlights we saw a bandicoot, two pademelons (miniature kangaroos), a sugar glider and several ring tail and bush tail possums.
Friday morning we were up early for the morning bird feeding walk. This one was with a young naturalist named Louise who is not an O'Reilly. The mornings were cool in the mountains but we had another perfect, cloudless day. First we started out feeding colorful rosellas and king parrots out of our hands! They are so used to being fed here that you hold out both hands full of seed and soon you have about five birds perched on you. At one time both Rita and I had a bird in each hand, birds on each shoulder and one on our head. It was great fun! Then we went into the bush and looked at the bower of the satin bower bird but he wasn't home. We did see a rare spotted quail-thrush along with golden whistlers and eastern yellow robins. But the highlight was when Louise held out her hands with raisins and the regent bower bird swooped down to eat. They were nervous but ate out of her hand quickly nevertheless. The male is a beautiful black and yellow bird and is the symbol on the O'Reilly logo.
After a big breakfast buffet with everything imaginable (Australians sometimes eat beans on toast, like the Brits, and spaghetti on toast) we were given the choice of hikes for the day. The guides come around to the tables and tell you what's on the agenda for the day which usually consist of some all day hikes and some half day morning hikes and half day afternoon hikes. Tim O'Reilly was taking a half day hike to mushroom rock, a hike he hadn't done in several months and one that is not usually on the list. He said it was a little difficult on the feet but not too bad. I talked Rita into going on that one which she afterwards labeled the "hike from hell". It is now five days after that hike and her calves and quadriceps are still sore but she has stopped walking like Frankenstein.
A four wheel drive bus took us down a dirt trail to the starting point of our hike. On the way there we saw a wild dingo on the trail. There were only two other women on the hike along with Tim, Rita and I. We were on the edge of the rain forest and mostly in a dry eucalypt forest. And we weren't on any trail but headed out across the bush. The hike was not that far in distance, only about 5-7 kilometers, but up the sides of mountains, along the edges of mountains and down steep inclines. It made Rita nervous (and one other woman too) as she hadn't hiked down such steep slopes before. I was nervous about her falling and tried to get between her and the slope as much as possible. We did see mushroom rock, a large bolder in the shape of a mushroom, and had nice views from the top of Mount Alexander. We also saw some kangaroos and wallabies that we startled along with some birdlife. But we were longer than planned and missed our lunch. We made it back with just a few bruises, achy muscles and hungry stomachs.
They did feed us a late lunch when we returned and we took the rest of the afternoon off. We showered, did some shopping in the gift shop and laid in the sunshine. After another big dinner we decided that it might do our muscles good (and digestion too) if we went on the short night hike with Lousie to see glow worms. We did go on the three kilometer hike, each armed with a flashlight, to a grotto. There we turned off the lights and waited for our eyes to adjust. Soon we could see several small glow worms on the side of a damp rock wall. It was interesting and on the way back we saw another ring tail possum. We went to bed early that night, tired and sore.
After experiencing the sleep of the dead, we woke the next morning refreshed. I was a little sore but Rita was very sore. The previous day we purchased some bird seed and this morning we fed rosellas and king parrots on our balcony. Then we joined the bird feeding hike and finally got a chance to see Jock the satin bower bird in his bower. The male satin bower bird is a dark, glossy blue; almost black looking. The male satin bower bird likes to build his bower and stock it with items of blue - blue feathers, blue ribbons, blue paper, anything blue. He attracts the female to his bower during the mating season. Jock's bower is close to the lodge and Tim showed us what Jock does when he reached in and moved the blue items in the bower. Jock came right down and rearranged them to his liking. If you know of the Richard Attenborough's TV shows on nature, one starred Jock stocking his bower. Then we fed some more beautiful regent bower birds before feeding ourselves at another breakfast buffet.
We decided that one last hike would maybe loosen our leg muscles so we took the morning hike with Tim to Elebana Falls. The four kilometer hike was all in the rain forest along a nice trail to the waterfall. It was a nice hike to finish our sojourn at the mountain lodge. We can highly recommend O'Reillys to anyone who likes hiking, rain forests, birds and wildlife.
After our last big lunch we drove down the narrow road towards Brisbane again. We took the bypass highway around Brisbane and headed further north. Enroute to our destination we took a short detour to view the Glasshouse Mountains, discovered and named by Captain Cook. They are a strange formation of sharply peaked mountains pointing straight up out of a flat terrain. Some look like inverted ice cream cones while others look like scoops of ice cream.
About sunset we arrived at Noosa and checked into our hotel, the Seahaven, situated right on the beach. The town of Noosa is considered the main town on the Sunshine Coast. While this area is not as touristy as the Gold Coast, locals still complain that Noosa is becoming a miniature replica. But most of the hotels, restaurants, and shops are along Hastings Street and this is only about two blocks long. Missing are the amusement parks, wax museums and other garish attractions. We found it a nice, attractive seaside town. In the evening we walked up to Le Monde, a sidewalk cafe, for a delicious seafood dinner. I had my Moreton Bay bugs again while Rita had a nice snapper fillet.
Sunday morning was a nice, sunny day again. Temperatures during the day climbed into the 80s so we could dress in shorts and T-shirts. We walked to a sidewalk cafe called Aromas for breakfast and strong coffee. Then we walked to the Noosa National Park where we took a four kilometer hike along the coast trail. We had a beautiful walk with sunshine, emerald blue sea, tropical trees, rocky beaches, birds and a new cove around each bend. The area reminded us of walks we've had in Hawaii or La Jolla. This area has lots of tropical plants in bloom such as frangipani, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and poinsettias. There are wild koalas in the park too but we didn't see any. We hiked to Noosa Heads where the ocean meets the bay and saw the rock formations called Hells Gates. Back at the park headquarters we stopped to watch the colorful rainbow lorikeets and fig birds. Then we hiked to a Baskin Robbins shop we spotted earlier and had ice cream sundaes. We walked around town some and along the beach boardwalk. In the afternoon the skies started to cloud up and we could see rain clouds over the ocean. We took a short drive to the nearby towns of Perigian Beach and Coolum. On the way back we saw the most beautiful and bright rainbow over the ocean. We took photos but somehow Rita's film didn't wind up so we lost those photographs.
That last evening it began to rain in town. We had one of our best meals at a restaurant called La Plage. I had the delicious snapper fillet this time while Rita had ocean trout. Both were prepared with excellent sauces. It was a nice end to our short vacation.
Monday was an American holiday, Memorial Day, and we prepared ourselves for our trip back home. The weather held off nicely for us but this day the skies opened up and it poured. Luckily we had underground parking so we loaded the car and headed out towards Coolum. We took a back road from Coolum to Yandina passing sugar cane and pineapple fields which again reminded us of Hawaii. After a drive through heavy tropical rains we arrived at the Brisbane airport and caught our flight back home to Canberra. Once more we had a nice trip which included city, mountains and seaside. We hope you had a happy Memorial Day!
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