The Gold Coast Hinterland: Ancient Rainforest Behind the Neon

The Gold Coast Hinterland, rising sharply from the coastal plain to the Lamington Plateau and the Springbrook escarpment, provides the Gold Coast with one of the most dramatic transitions from beach resort to World Heritage wilderness of any major Australian tourism destination. The combination of the glitter strip's neon and the ancient subtropical rainforest 40 minutes inland creates the contrast that the hinterland tourism industry uses to attract visitors who have exhausted the beach and entertainment options or who came specifically for the natural environment that the national parks protect.

Lamington National Park, protecting the McPherson Range escarpment and the Lamington Plateau's subtropical and temperate rainforest, is one of the most significant components of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, the collection of rainforest patches in northeast NSW and southeast Queensland that represent the surviving fragments of the ancient Gondwana forest that once covered a much larger area of Australia before the continent's aridification. The park's birdlife, including the Albert's lyrebird, the regent bowerbird, and the diversity of rainforest species that the intact habitat supports, makes it one of Queensland's finest birdwatching destinations.

Springbrook National Park, on the escarpment immediately west of the northern Gold Coast, provides the accessible waterfall and rainforest experience that day visitors from the city and the resort strip seek. The Natural Bridge section, where the cave glow-worm colony and the natural rock bridge over Cave Creek provide the most photogenic and most visited feature, has become one of Queensland's most photographed natural attractions since the glow-worm discovery and the night tours that allow visitors to see them in their luminescent best created the tourism product that the natural feature supports.

O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat, the family guesthouse on the Lamington Plateau that has operated since 1926 and that has maintained the rainforest accommodation and the bird feeding that has created one of Australia's most distinctive wildlife encounter experiences, demonstrates the longevity that a genuinely special place can sustain when its management maintains the qualities that make it exceptional. The hand-feeding of king parrots and crimson rosellas that the guesthouse's tradition enables provides the visitor with the bird encounter that no wildlife park can replicate.

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