| Birding
On My Own - Australia and New Zealand 2002 Emmalee Tarry |
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Lamington
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 Regent Bowerbird |
Accommodations
At the top of the road at Lamington National Park there is the park campground and O'Reilly's Lodge. There is really no place to drive up here and I left my car parked for the next five days. Since the refrigerator requires that you drive every day I had to do without it.
I had picked the week of school vacation, the busiest week of the whole year to visit.. I managed to get one of the last available camp sites which was almost level. Campervans can use a site intended for tent campers if it is fairly level. Unlike a caravan there is no way to level a campervan with jacks. If your site is not flat you may have dishes sliding off the table and find yourself sleeping at an awkward angle. The campground is built on a hill and my site was a 200 yard uphill walk to the chemical toilets and hot showers. Water is available from several faucets in the campground. There are no powered sites or lights in the campground.
The park ranger opens the visitors center only on Tuesday and Thursday. You can pay AU$7 a night for your site with a credit card by calling the central registration number or when the visitors center is open. Apparently you can just get by without paying at all. There is no supervision at the campground at night. For this reason the park campgrounds are not as safe as the private ones. I didn't have any real trouble except for some out of control children playing ball here and hitting my van with the ball. The next morning one of the boys was trying to shoot a Bush Turkey with a homemade sling shot. Fortunately he wasn't good at it.
Between the campground and O'Reilly's Lodge is a large parking lot used by day visitors. People with caravans must stay in Canungra and drive the 35 km each day to the park. I don't think this is a viable alternative for birders and I would not want to drive that road more than once myself. If you find yourself shut out of the campground you can park at the end of the parking lot and walk down a short path to the toilet block. I noticed at least two campervans doing just that during the five days I was here. One van even had a table and lawn chairs out in the parking lot. This seems to be legal in Australia.
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The last open site was taken by a hiking club who sent a van
ahead with their tents and equipment while the group hiked up. They had
reserved 5 sites, but ended up having to share one site. This would not be
allowed in a more organized setting. The electric barbecues they were expecting
turned out to be a quarter mile uphill across from O'Reilly's. Notice the Bush Turkeys strutting around and the dry grass. |
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