Brisbane

This is not strictly a film school posting, but I had such a good time, I needed to let it out somewhere: Last weekend Stuart and I went to the Queensland rainforest, to Lamington National Park. He had been at a conference in Brisbane and I caught up with him to have a wekend away. We drove the hire car into the hills and ended up at O’Reilly’s guesthouse, a lodge in the mountains Stuart used to visit when he lived in Brisbane a long time ago.

So for him it was a re-discovery, for me it was a pleasant surprise. Apparently it has got a lot more comfortable in the interim, Stuart kept pointing out how bad the roads used to be, how he used to have to camp for lack of places to stay, how empty it was before the tourists arrived. Our room had an incredible view across the valley towards the volcanic plugs left over by erosion, and in the morning we took a bird walk and discovered a lot of colourful local birds as well as a bunch of kind of grey looking ones.

They all had cool names, though, like Scrub Wren, Black Faced Monarchs and Golden Bowerbird, Lewin’s Honey Eaters and Superb Fairy Wrens. And then there were Crimson Rosellas and Cockatoos and bush turkeys (which are apparently pretty tough to eat, otherwise they would surely be extinct by now), and the smaller version of a wallaby, the pademelon. First we thought it might be Paddymelon, something insulting towards the Irish settlers, but it turned out to just be the Aboriginal word. Since we had come to chill and the view from the balcony was so incredible, we took just a small hike, instead of the two day trek Stuart was hoping for (two days one way, that is).

It was still stunning, even just a small distance from the lodge we came across the humungous Moran Falls, total silence in the shadows of tall trees and a blubbering stream with clear water. So, check out the view from the balcony: