Lamington National Park

So I had been talking to Marjolien a bit and she invited me to go with her and the man whos house she was living at to some national park I'd never heard of. But as you can see from my weekly blogs I don't do a ton during the day soo I jumped at the chance. Sis drove me to the train station at 7:30(so nice!) and I got the train to Central...then I had to catch a train at platform 2. Now at the time it did not process to me that more than one line goes to platform 2, silly me. There was a train waiting there when I got there so I just jumped on it. A few minutes later I realized I was not on the right train. Awesome..so I got off at South Bank and waited 30 minutes for the next train. While waiting for the train this guy started talking to me.

I think he was hitting on me, oh well..I only had to go like 3 stops so I sidestepped that one pretty easy. I got to the station and started walking the direction Marj told me to and she met me half way..with a plate in her hand, which was strange.

I got to her house and it seemed pretty nice. She had a really big room and there was a kitchen and like 7 other girls were living there as well. I met Richard, the owner of this house. We were supposed to leave at 9 which is why I left so early, but we didn't leave until like 9:30 to 9:45ish. But we were on the road nonetheless..but then we had to get gas which gave me the opportunity to buy food as I had not had breakfast yet. THEN we were on the road. We were heading in the direction of the Gold Coast but had to take some side exits.

It was pretty easy to get there I think, but it did take forever. Probably like an hour and a half to 2 hours. O'Reilly's(the area we were going) was on a mountain and there was a long, windy, mostly single lane road up to it. Good views though.

We got to the top, Richard parked and we asked the info guy what to do. I'm really smart so I wore flip flops because I thought it would just be a leisurely stroll through a park, but I was wrong. I have good sandals though so it was no big. We first went on the tree top walk. It took about 45 minutes and it was really nice. It was sweet walking between trees. Then halfway through we saw this big ladder heading up a tree so we decided to climb up it. It was really cool, we got the the first level and took some photos and then realized there was another level! So up we went, the views were unreal, it was so amazing up there.

Then we made our way back down and saw that it was 30 meters high. Not too bad eh.

We finished the tree top walk and then Marj and I went to check out the birds. We bought bird feed from the gift shop and then fed the birds out of our hands. It was sweet, sometimes they landed on your head though. Lucky birds though, they just get fed by stupid tourists all day lol. But it was really fun and we got some sweet pictures. One bird though..it was satan, it dug its claws into my arm and wouldn't let go! I tried to shake it off but it wouldn't budge. Finally it just left and we went and had some lunch.

After lunch we decided to do the Morans Falls walk, which was about a km up the road. It was 2.2 km both ways. The way down was almost all downhill.

..which made me very nervous about the return trip..But it was really beautiful, tons of funky looking trees and the path was fairly easy to walk as well, even with thongs. We got to an area with a really good view of the waterfall, it was amazing. There was a rainbow under it as well! I think I read that that it was 80 meters high, which is a pretty good height..lol. We kept walking and got to the stream that led out to the waterfall, but we kept walking on the path and would walk to the edge later. The end of the path was all fenced off so there wasn't that good of a view of the waterfall, so we decided to jump the fence. Don't worry, it looked safe. We got some amazing pictures there though. It was great, then we jumped back over and walked a few meters to the next fenced area we could jump over. Got some more unreal photos and then went back. In the area we were just sitting in there was a huuge scary looking lizard!! It was intense as. But we went back to the stream area and decided to walk to the edge of the waterfall. Theres no path so we jumped rocks and on the branches..it was an adventure! We got to the end and it was so cool. We got some gorgeous photos here as well, the view was breathtaking! And we were right on the edge of the waterfall! So exciting. Then we decided to head back up the path. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, it was actually better going up than down! When we got to the top Richard said he would go get the car and we waited there for him. It was pretty sweet.

On our way back down, about 15 minutes into the drive Richard turned the radio off because he could hear a wierd sound.

..it was coming from the tire. We pulled to the side of the road only to discover we had a flat! I did the only thing I could...started snapping pictures haha. Richard looked in the trunk but he was missing something he needed to change the tire. We hung out on the side of the road, then we saw 3 caravans and a couple cars drive past. They ALL stopped to help. One of the cars was a park ranger type person so they helped him change the tire. In the campervans was a bunch of backpackers! So the helped keep me and Marj entertained. It was about 6 or 7 European guys, and as it turned out Marj went to English school in Sydney with a couple of them! How random is that. After the tire got fixed everyone left and we got back into the car...only to discover it wouldn't start! He said sometimes it does that so we'd just have to wait like 15 more minutes. So we decided to have some watermelon. Got back in the car after and it started...yay! So we were on our way again.

We got back to the city after 7 and Richard had 2 pick up a couple English girls that wanted to have a look at a room they could rent. So went back to the house after and they took a look, we hung out for about 30 minutes and then went back, dropped the girls off somewhere and went to a mongolian BBQ restaurant. Richard knows the owner so we got it for free! It was soo good, you pick all the ingredients you want and all the sauces, but it in a bowl and then they cook it for you, right infront of you! It tastes amazing. After the dinner got a chocolate fondue! mmm..soo good. After the dinner Richard said he would drive me home, which was very nice. But we got very very lost as I do not know how to get to Albany Creek from the city. What should have taken 20 minutes ended up taking over an hour. Buut eventually I got back, at about 11:00.