Our Bunya Mountains tour is a relatively new one, developed because:

1. We visited with 6 guests on a customized tour a couple of years ago and loved the forests and peacefulness there.
2. Our name is Araucaria, and althugh we regularly see giant hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) growing naturally in the forests, we don’t see the even more giant bunya pines (A. bidwillii) in the wild on our usual travels – and they really are something to see!

A few days ago we headed off that way on a 2-day  tour with a lovely from Germany who were especially keen to see the bunya forests, and their son who is living in Australia.

So, off we went out west, up the range to Toowoomba, down again to the flat farming country and finally the climb towards the Bunyas.

While enjoying bunya burgers and bunya pies for lunch (made with meat, bunya nuts and some delicious herbs and spices) at Poppies Restaurant, this red-necked wallaby posed for us in front of an Australia flag and an Aboriginal flag, and a kookaburra joined in, sitting in the tree to the left – nice little collection of Australiana for our visitors!

 

We all agreed the chalet Silky Oaks (which Darren and I had stayed in with guests on our last visit) was quite delightful. Great views, polished timber floors, bathrooms upstairs and downstairs and fully self-contained.

As soon as we had unpacked our things we  walked across the road and into the forest, beneath towering bunyas, although trying not to stay too long under any of them, as this is the time of year they drop their massive cones.

 

 

I had been thrown by a horse two weeks earlier when he was startled by a bunya cone falling at home from a tree that was inside our house many years ago decorated for Christmas and is now much taller than the house.

The cones are BIG! Here are a couple that had fallen near the accommodation, one of them open and showing the nuts that are so important to the Aboriginals. They used to gather from many kilometres away to feast on the nuts for several weeks whenever there was a good crop.

The following morning we chose a walking track that didn’t go under too many of the bunyas! Darren let us off at Westcott parking area and we started off on the track to the Paradise parking area, through a great variety of vegetation.

We started off through a ‘bald,’ a grassy area of which there are several on the mountain

 

We were soon in rainforest, then came out into eucalypt  forest with some tall grass-trees that would have been around since before white settlement in Australia.

We stopped to admire good views across the Darling Downs from the clifftops, then continued on into more forest, with tall strangler figs and plenty of ferns and lianas.

 

 

Lunch that day was at the Bunya Gallery Cafe, including a bunya salad

A wedgetail eagle (Australia’s largest raptor) happened to pass by while we were dining. Other birds we had seen included king parrot, crimson rosella, superb fairy-wren, brown cuckoodove, brush turkey and various others.

‘Magical’ and ‘idyllic’ were two of the oft-repeated words from our guests during our stay, and we’re looking forward to our own next visit.