May 10 Springbrook National Park

Whilst David and I have never visited the theme parks of the Gold Coast – we have both been to the wonderful hinterland together and I have been by myself on a number of occasions.  We love Lamington National Park but decided that we would leave a good visit there until the boys could do some longer bush walks so we can make the most of a stay there.  We also knew that we could undertake a range of beautiful walks, see some lovely waterfalls and rainforest and spectacular lookouts in the closer Springbrook National Park.  So on a lovely Sunday (after a delightful mothers day breakfast prepared by my boys) we headed off to Springbrook.

Natural Bridge Falls

Springbrook National Park is made up of a number of sections.  The number one attraction and one most of you will have seen in advertising Queensland is the Natural Bridge and was fartherest from Tweed Heads so we went there first.  It is a lovely walk and the falls themselves are very special.  However, the carpark was packed, as was the walk.  Whilst this didn’t stop us enjoying ourselves it made photography harder and got both David and I rather cross as there were quite a number of people ignoring the signs to stay on the path to protect the forest and there were even people swimming in the falls although that too is completely forbidden again to preserve a very delicate area.  The boys had a great time on the walk and loved the falls.  They took a myriad of photos – some okay, some good and some, well, interesting.  

Purlingbrook Falls

After our walk we jumped back in the car and went to the next falls – Purlingbrook falls which were in another section of the park (again with a packed carpark and people picnicking, playing games in the park nearby etc).  We didn’t do the 4k walk as we had arrived too late in the day – but there are a couple of short walks on either side of the falls that give excellent views as well.  I would love to return another day to do the longer walk. 

Best of All Lookout

We still had enough time to go to a couple of the lookouts about 10k away – one with the title of Best of All Look Outs so how could we not go there.  The lookout comes at the end of a short but delicious walk – it had lovely rocks, rainforest and antartic beech trees (which are a truly ancient tree with links back to Gondwana).  Then you arrive at the view and it is impressive.  The lookout is across the ancient remains of this super massive volcano that gave rise to the many national parks behind Byron Bay and the Gold Coast.  Whilst we had kept telling the boys that this national park was only an edge of this huge volcano it wasn’t until we arrived at this lookout that they began to comprehend what this means in terms of size.

View of Mt Warning from the Best of All Look Outs - Mt Warning is the centre of this massive caldera

We returned late in the day – picking up fish and chips for dinner.  It was a lovely day, Springbrook is a great national park which we would recommend to anyone.  If you can go not on the weekend it will probably lessen the crowds – but no matter it is a beautiful place and it had made for a lovely mother's day.