Tullawallal Circuit, Lamington National Park - June 2016

Sunset from Binna Burra.

This blogging game is hard work, its got me buggered how some bloggers manage to churn out such quality posts. I look at the crap that I churn out and am thankful that most of my readers are either workmates, friends or family, in other words readers that humour me by telling me that they actually look at this waffle, probably just to keep me happy. Now while I reckon that most blogs are just self indulgent crap there are some blogs that I actually enjoy reading and look forward to each new offering, the original and still the best is the slightly twisted ramblings of Mr Fiasco, his frequent misfortune (not to mention great photos) always brings a smile to my face. My other indulgence is another blog that I've mentioned before, Mildly Extreme. Jane started her blog around the same time as me and constantly puts me to shame with the quality of her work, over time we've been in contact off and on, eventually all the planets aligned and Sam and I decided to head up the Queensland and catch up with Jane and do a walk or two.

I'm struggling for photos on this walk, so how about a photo at the boot cleaning station at the start of  the Border Track....well at least its more or less in focus.

Now the title of this post is Tullawallal Circuit but in reality this will be a bit of a rambling post full of fluff because to be quite honest my photos on the walk are absolutely shit, in fact if you do see a photo in the rainforest that looks half descent then its most likely one of Jane's. Before I got to the walk though there was a little matter of a 1800 kilometre drive, yeah its lucky I love a road trip. After finishing work early on the Wednesday I jumped in the ute, cranked up the Johnny Cash and Parkway Drive (luckily Sam had decided to fly up so she didn't have to put up with my peculiar mix of country and metal core). Wednesday had me cruising through the back blocks of New South Wales before I pulled over near Moree for a few hours sleep, lulled to sleep by the sounds of B Doubles rumbling past. The sun (and the B Doubles) woke me early on Thursday and after uncurling myself from the ute, stretching and scratching my balls, I headed off on the rest of my journey to Binna Burra, arriving at around 2pm primed and ready for a bit of a walk.

Heading away from Binna Burra on the Border Track.

First up though I checked into my room and gave Jane a call to let her know that I was there, now it doesn't really come across in the blog but I'm painfully shy so actually meeting someone who I admire online was pretty terrifying. Jane must of wondered what she had got into when we finally met up and I was too shy to even look her in the eye! The good news is that Jane was up for an afternoon stroll so we decided to do the easy Tullawallal Circuit and get to know each other a bit. The Tulluwallal Circuit starts up near the Tea Rooms at Binna Burra so the first hurdle on the walk was to bypass the chance for  a caffeine hit, it was a slightly twitchy Feral Walker that headed off along the Border Track with his new friend, Ms Extreme.

Yep, this is one of Ms Extreme's.

Coming from Victoria, the rainforest of the Lamington National Park is stunningly beautiful and different to any walking that we have down here.

The Border Track runs between Binna Burra and O'Reilly's and is a superb rainforest walk, The Tullawallal Circuit heads along it for a couple of kilometres before branching off towards the summit of Tullawallal. Two things quickly became apparent to me on this stroll, the first one was that I was an amateur when it came to taking photos in the rainforest compared to Ms Extreme, and the second thing was that I was going to struggle to keep up the pace. After reaching the side trip to the summit of Tullawallal we were soon relaxing on the rocky summit, there's no far reaching views from Tullawallal though, the summit is vegetated with thick temperate rainforest, the most notable tree being the Antarctic Beech Trees, which are the most northern most in Australia. This place would be a magic spot to take photos with the mist rolling through but in the late afternoon dappled sunlight I couldn't do anything with it.

This is all I could do with the majestic Antarctic Beech on Tullawallal.

Leaving the summit we headed back down and took the loop track back to Binna Burra along the west side of the ridge, the western aspect giving us a bit more light for photos in the dense rainforest. The good news was that I'd managed to keep up with Ms Extreme, and Jane was giving me plenty of helpful hints when it came to taking photos is the forest, particularly of her specialty, fungi. After an hour and a half, that had passed in the blink of an eye, we popped back out of the rainforest at Binna Burra, just in time to catch the sun setting in the west as we wandered down the road to Binna Burra Lodge, a sunset and nice conversation, life was good.

Heading back along the western side of the ridge back to Binna Burra in the late afternoon.

The view from the Sky Lodge.

Now with the post featuring such a short walk and my fairly average photos I figured that I'd better talk a bit about the accommodation to pad the post out a bit, otherwise it could be the shortest post I've ever put out. So anyway, as I've mentioned we stayed at Binna Burra Lodge, Sam and I stayed in a 1 Bedroom Sky Lodge while Jane stayed in the old Heritage Listed Mountain Lodge. The Sky Lodge was very nice, with a large balcony over looking the Numinbah Valley and the high rises of Surfers Paradise in the distance. The fully equipped kitchen, spa and king sized bed were also greatly appreciated.....but, you know what, I reckon it was a little bit over priced. We paid around $340 per night for the Sky Lodge and that didn't include breakfast or wifi, the lodge wasn't even serviced (although I'm not sure if that was an oversight by house keeping as I never followed this up with reception....hey I was too busy out having fun in the rainforest!) Ms Extreme stayed in the rustic Mountain Lodge and paid closer to $100 (it was an internet special) and to be honest I think that she got the better deal, her tariff also included two cooked breakfasts of which she was kind enough to share with me. The rustic Mountain Lodge also looks better to my eyes, the lichen and moss covered roof of the Mountain Lodge giving it a particular authenticity, the modern angles of the Sky Lodges would look just as at home on the coast or in the city. I suppose the negative thing about the Mountain Lodge room was that it was fairly basic in that it didn't have to many luxuries, with shared facilities the order of the day, but with a price difference of nearly $300 (if you add on the two breakfasts to the cost of a Sky Lodge) I reckon next time I might save my cash and stay in the Mountain Lodge.

Some of the more rustic accommodation at Binna Burra Lodge.

Binna Burra Lodge, think Cradle Mountain Lodge in the rainforest and you'll get the idea. 

The modern but exy Sky Lodge.

The native gardens at Binna Burra are also quite impressive.

The tea rooms at Binna Burra do a good Devinshire Tea, Pizza on Saturday night wasn't bad either.

The Dirt.

The Tullawallal Circuit is around 5 kilometres long, at least that's what my notes tell me, my GPS really struggled with what I can only assume was the dense rainforest canopy. Due to my GPS frequently dropping a cog on the walk I haven't got a metres climbed figure, but I would hazard a guess that the total amount of climbing would be around 100 metres. This is an easy walk and its been written up by John & Lyn Daly in their Take A Walk in South East Queensland book, I think Tyrone Thomas has also written up this walk in some of his old books if you can get hold of them. In hindsight the Tullawallal Circuit proved to be the perfect walk for me to get over my nervousness and get to know Ms Extreme, there's no navigation challengers and the track is very well engineered so I could just concentrate on crapping on!

On our way home from Queensland Sam and I stayed at the International Hotel in Wagga Wagga, at $140 the price was OK and it had free wifi so that's a positive, but check out all the black velour, we were living life in the fast lane of the 1980's for a night.

Perched on my velour throne I'm looking surprisingly fresh after my 14 hour drive.