Haystack Mountain - Gibraltar Range National Park

Walk north. Leave Boundary Falls by the Gibraltar-Washpool World Heritage Walk. Enjoy the track while it lasts. On the way, detour to Duffer Falls and fill up with sweet granite-stripped water.  Continue on but walk silently. Watch for flame robins. Keep an eye out for a subtle footpad, right on track, at the top of a rise, on a bend.  Disappear into the scrub through hard bending banksia and heath. Head up. Weave footprints and foxtail rush. Create a path between granite boulders. Get scratched. Beware of eyepokers. Emerge from behind New England mallee and find the open space. You are now the needle on Haystack Mountain.

New England National Park - walking the cloud forest

We are off track; walking the New England escarpment to Darkie Point. Nests of light settle on the forest floor having broken through a closely woven canopy of Antarctic beech trees which tower above us. Then low cloud streams in. The light freezes mid air, forming thick golden shards that angle against our compass bearing. Ahead, the forest slopes towards the escarpment's cliff line. A prevailing wind drags mist out of the valley below and whips it  up the rock face. The air is so dense with moisture it is caught on leaves and branches and drips, drips, drips as if it were raining.

This is the cloud forest at work: the manifestation of a landscape shaped in such a way, located in such a place, as to draw in and create its own cycle of wild weather that keeps this cool temperate rainforest constantly supplied with water.

The Steamers - Main Range National Park, QLD

It is often difficult being a visitor to new places - you touch the landscape so briefly, you walk the route, see the spectacular views, and are left to only imagine the endless opportunities for exploration. Traveling can sometimes feel more like ticking off the destination rather than immersing oneself in a new environment. However, sitting on the stern of The Steamers in Main Range National Park, Queensland, staring down the length of its spectacular pinnacles and cliffs, I felt that no matter how brief our visit might be it was better than not being there at all.

Hat Head National Park - Connors Track

The beauty of our coastline should not be taken for granted. All too often we head inland seeking adventure and remote locations. The coast, however, has a more expansive wildness to offer. Hat Head National Park is a perfect example with its long, undeveloped stretches of coast where dolphins surf endless breaks and vast beaches are broken by rugged forested headlands, where whales pass within a whisper of the rocks below and birds of prey drift by at eye level cruising the on-shore winds.

Apsley Gorge - success or failure?

Sometimes a trip is a success. Sometimes it can be a failure. Often it is difficult to tell the two apart. Our recent foray deep into Apsley Gorge is a case in point. Its sheer crumbling walls tower more than 140m high in points and its sparse water course appears and disappears beneath and around massive boulders and landslips that cover the gorge floor.

Nymboida River - messing about in boats

"Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING - absolutely nothing - half so 

much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Nymboida River - Platypus Flat to the Cod Hole

Kemps Pinnacle - Willi Willi National Park

Why walk when you can drive?

We could all give a dozen good answers to that question but, in the case of our walk to Kemps Pinnacle, it was simply because we didn't know better. Using our topographical map to navigate, in an area little explored by us before, we started walking along Hastings Forest Way before veering onto a closed, old forest road out to Spokes Lookout. From there, map in hand, we continued further along the escarpment past Spokes Mountain where suddenly our forest road disappeared into an overgrown mess of grass and shrubbery.

Our topo showed that the road continued towards Kemps Pinnacle, about two kilometres away, and so we pushed on, waist deep in weeds, scratched to buggery by wild raspberry and rainforest vines following the faint, overgrown impression of the old road. When we burst from the undergrowth onto what we later learned was called Coachwood Road, a white 4WD zipped past our astonished eyes. So, we could have driven.