DAY 16 - EXPLORING BUNYA MOUNTAINS...

We have big plans for today.  The plan is for a pretty early start and head up and spend the morning up at Bunya Mountains having a bit of a look around and then head back to Kingaroy mid afternoon to check out a few places of interest there as we are off again tomorrow to head towards Moore...

We left just after 8.30am and headed out towards Dalby.  On the way we passed the entrance to "Bethany" which was the home of the former Queensland Premier, Jo Bjekle Peterson.  This was one of the places I would like to check out... Maybe next visit..

The road up to Bunya Mountains via Maidenvale was quite a good road, there was a little bit of dirt but mostly bitumen and it didn't have the twists and turns of the road up from Kingaroy...

A letter box on our way that took our fancy...

The road was good and the views stunning...

 Bunya Mountains National Park was declared in 1908. It is Queensland's second oldest national park and is a pristine, peaceful and spectacular wilderness range forming an isolated section of the Great Dividing Range.   The immense subtropical range of cool, green rainforest, eucalypt forests and woodlands is home to the world’s largest forest of bunya pines. Dome shaped bunya pines graciously raise their majestic heads above the forest canopy crowning a magnificent green splendour. High altitude grasslands include rare grasses of international interest.  The area  also has the largest natural Bunya pine forests in the world.

The Bunya Mountains rise abruptly from the surrounding plains to an average elevation of 975m reaching over 1100m above sea level at Mount Mowbullan and Mount Kiangarow. The range features panoramic mountain scenery and breathtaking views over the South Burnett region and Darling Downs plains. Because of its height, it is generally at least 5 – 70C cooler than the surrounding plains all year round.

Our first stop once we arrived up on the mountain was Fisher's Lookout...  Bunya Mountains offer such breathtaking landscapes and this lookout is the perfect place to take it all in.

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Just recently a new viewing platform has been completed.  The 350 sq mt elevated platform provides a better vantage point to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the rich cultural history of the area... It also provides safer access for more visitors also with the extra carport that has also been added.

From this lookout we continued into Dandabah Village.   There are hundreds of holiday houses and cabins available for rent. In fact, the village itself has very few permanent residents. There are two cafes to choose from,  Poppies on the Hill and Elz Bistro, a well-stocked (but pricey) general store, and a somewhat fancy restaurant, Lyrics.

The drive was lovely, through thick vegetation and tall Bunya Pines, we passed lots of beautiful cottages.  I could not remember any of this from our previous visits here, although that was 40 years ago.  Still seeing these cottages, made us think that coming back here for a few days or a week with both Ian and Kathy and John and Barb would be another great holiday we could all indulge in together.  Although there is a camping ground up here, the road up is not really suitable to tow a caravan, so we would need to hire a house to come and stay...

Camping ground up at Bunya Mountains

The Bunya Mountains is also home to much wildlife and in particular is home to 215 species of birds, with rare and precious varieties attracting birdwatchers worldwide. Brilliantly coloured king parrots, crimson rosellas and satin bowerbirds are common sights. Countless red-necked wallabies bound or preen in grassy areas. Swamp wallabies and red-necked pademelons prefer the cover of the rainforest but are observed along the roadside or during a rainforest walk.

Aboriginal people historically used Bunya Mountains as a meeting place for the various tribes scattered throughout Queensland and New South Wales. They feasted seasonally on the bunya nuts collected from the bunya pine trees (Araucaria bidwillii).

Early Europeans used bullock and horse teams to harvest the red cedar and other precious rainforest timbers. The chutes used to roll the logs down to the bottom of the mountain can still be seen today. Today 11,700ha of Bunya Mountains is a National Park.

We parked in the car park at Dandabah from where the major walks commence and decided that we would do a short 500m circuit walk as we really weren't dressed to do a long walk, and also we didn't have a lot of time, as it was now after 11am.

We explored the area around Dandabah where we saw a sculpture of a large hand. The hand was designed and sculpted at Gatton by Ironic Art in June 2008. The buttress root base is a reminder of bygone logging days while fungi and vines represent nature reclaiming the forest. The hand reaching to the heavens demonstrates the eternal struggle within the rainforest to reach the life-giving sunlight above the canopy. It also symbolises humans caring for the Bunya Mountains. 

Behind this sculpture sits a lovely little coffee shop and bar with seating and tables that look out over the rainforest.  It seemed popular with several people sitting on the deck enjoying an early lunch...
 

From here we set off on the short Bunya Bunya walk...  Because it was only going to be a 500m walk, we didn't worry too much about taking our water bottle or our hat as we were walking within the canopy of the rainforest...

 

 

 

Both the Bunya Bunya Walk and the Barker Creek Circuit walks started from the same point and somehow, we missed the turn off back to the carpark from the Bunya Bunya walk.  Our 500m walk seemed to go on forever.  Little did we realize that we were no longer on the Bunya Bunya walk but were now well on truly doing the much longer Barker Creek Circuit walk.  It was pretty spectacular and we were enjoying it...

Massively tall straight trees reaching to the sky..

The Bunya Bunya Walk was an easy stroll that takes you from the back of the Dundabah camping area  over Saddletree Creek to the picnic area.  We found that many of the trees were named along the walk.

Unfortunately for us we  missed the turn back into the picnic area and ended up on the much longer 10km Barber Creek Walk.  It was beautiful and amazing to be standing underneath the ancient bunya pine forest with the trees towering about us,  there are delightful waterfalls and rock pools along this walk also.  It was  a graded three walk, but we didn't find it too bad until we slightly ventured off the path to check out the big Bunya Tree that had the marks from where the Aboriginals used to climb it to retrieve the Bunya Nuts...

 

The Bunya pine trees produce bumper nut crops about every three years. Local Aboriginal tribes used to invite neighbouring groups to join them for the Bunya Festival when they feasted on bunya nuts. As we walked among the huge Bunya Pine trees, we saw the remains of notches in the trees where Aboriginals climbed up using hand and foot holds to get the nuts.

This was not a good idea on Steve's part...  on stepping down, he misjudged the ground.  His sunglasses are not good when looking down as the depth of field is probably not terribly accurate, and in doing so he lost his balance and ended up tripping on some roots and head ploughed into a tree.

This totally freaked me out as initially he couldn't move and there was blood everywhere.  Now normally when we go walking we have a backpack with our water bottles in there, and hats on our heads, but because we were initially only going 500m we hadn't worried about this.  Just after the fall, a lovely couple walked by,  they were so kind and offered to give us some of their water, so that I could clean up Steve's face.  At this stage he had no idea how bad his face looked.  It was only after I took these couple of photos did he what a mess he had done to his face...

He had the wind knocked out of him for quite a while and when he finally recovered enough to get up, our walk came to an abrupt end as we headed back along the path we had come from heading back to the car.  I told Steve to go ahead of me as he is a much faster walker than I am, and I wanted him to get back to be able to clean his face up a little.  

The cut on his face under his eye was actually very deep and once we got back to Dandabah Village, I went in search of a Ranger to see if they had a first aid kit so that we could dress his wound.  In the end I ended up at the General Store and the lady there rang a friend who was up on the mountain for a day.  She turned out to be not only a nurse but also the wife of a doctor from Wondai and she had a good look at his face and dressed it for him.  She also suggested that we should head to the Kingaroy Hospital on our way home and get a tetanus shot as you never know what sort of germs and bacteria are in the bark of the treet..

She was a lovely lady, wouldn't let us pay for her time, or the supplies she bought to mend Steve's face and in the end the only thing she would do was allowed us to buy her a coffee...  We spent a good hour or more chatting to her.  She had lots of interesting tales to share about the district...

It was while Steve was having his face stitched up that I notices the beautiful little wrens playing around the wagon where we were sitting...  They are so fast though and incredibly difficult to photograph..

Female wren..

General Store at Dandabah Village

Looking much better after a patch up job...

Once the nurse left, we thought we better grab some lunch before heading back down the mountain.  We had some recommendations from a few different people to have lunch at t Poppies Cafe.  Their pies came highly recommended..  They did not disappoint...  Steve ordered the Lamb and Mint Pie, and I had the Chicken and Mushroom pie.  Both pies were loaded with huge chunks of lamb and chicken, and Steve really hit the jackpot with his pie.  The flavour was something else.  BEST PIE EVER... They were definitely home made, and both top and bottom of the pie were made with Puff Pastry which made it quite light.    It is worth traveling back to Bunya Mountains for the pies alone... 'Can't recommend this place enough.   If you ever get the chance, go for a visit. You won't regret it. It is an outstanding place.

We found an ourside table to sit at for lunch.  This way we were able to enjoy the amazing wildlife and birdlife that was around..

 

Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Lamb and Mint Pie...  Amazing flavours...

 If you want to see kangaroos in abundance than Bunya Mountains is the place to come, there were hundreds of wallabies sitting around the grounds,  A lot of the animals had joeys and it was lovely watching the young ones, tentatively popping their heads up and hopping out of their pouch for a short time.  

In fact a walk around the mountain might lead to an encounter with many different species of wallabies, including the black-striped wallabies, whiptail wallabie, red necked wallabies, swamp wallabies, rufous bettongs, red-legged pademelons and red-necked pademelons along with eastern grey kangaroos around the bottom of the mountin...

One of the most iconic things to do at Bunya Mountains is feeding the abundance of birds that abound there.  They were so friendly and were coming right up to our table... We didn't feed the birds but Poppies do see wild bird seed if you want to feed them.  We have done heaps of bird feeding these holidays so we were just happy to watch  and enjoy them today...  There were kookaburras, crimson rosellas, king parrots, cockatoos, firetail finches, and many other species around toda

 

 

Once we had our late lunch it was time to head back down the mountain and head back to Kingaroy.  We decided to take a different route home.  It was a more scenic route, although the road was steeper, narrower and windier than the road we came up.  It took us into Kingaroy via the way we had driven into it from Wondai.  It meant that we passed the hospital on the way in.  It was close to 4pm by the time we got to the hospital.  We had head some no so good things about the hospital here, but we couldn't sing their praises enough.  Steve was only in the waiting room for about 10 minutes before he was called in to be seen by a doctor. 

 

The doctors weren't so concerned with his visable injuries but were a little concerned with Steve's neck as he had taken quite a hit and his neck was sore and hard to turn.  They called one of the senior doctors in to check him out before giving him his shot, and then he had to wait around for a while to make sure he was OK.  One of the student doctors then patched him up.  I would have to say though the nurse did a far better shot, and with the patches the hospital put on Steve's face, it was very obvious that he had an injury.  The worst part about it was that they didn't want us to touch them for a couple of days before I dressed them again..

They also sent us away with some extra patches and panadol for him to take that night as they figured his head would be sore...
 

The Hospital patch up... 

Unfortunately Steve's favourite glasses did not survive the mishap.  They snapped right through the bridge of the glasses.  It was these glasses that did all the damage to his cheek when they gourged into his cheek and ripped a hunk of skin out..

It was after sunset by the time we got out of the hospital.  So much for all the sight seeing we had planned around Kingaroy for that afternoon... never mind it is a good excuse for a revisit of this pretty country town.

We fuelled up on our way home, and ducked into Woolies to grab a couple of things that we had forgotten to get the evening before.  It was after 7.30pm by the time we got home.  We just had a light dinner tonight.  Neither of us felt like much, and we wanted to get as much packing done this evening as we could because the weather forecast for tomorrow was for rain...