In Pursuit of Oz: Lost in the Bush

(Further to All Quiet on the Gold Coast)

I slept soundly through the night. With Springbrook National Park on today’s itinerary, there was every reason to wake up in good spirits. We had booked a tour there and could almost smell adventure in the air.

The pick time was a generous 8:45. Having done full justice to the breakfast menu in a nearby eatery, we stepped out in the crisp Gold Coast morning.

Steve picked us up outside the Aquaduck exactly at the promised time. I was lucky to claim the lone seat beside him, just behind the windscreen, with an uninterrupted view of the road ahead. From there, he collected the remaining members of the tour at the next stops, ending at Nerang railway station.

Steve was a stocky fellow who seemed to regard guiding tourists as a convenient excuse to perform stand-up comedy between destinations. Whether he moonlighted as a comedian after hours, I never found out. But he handled the driving with remarkable assurance, steering the bus through the morning traffic with effortless smoothness restrained only by Queensland’s speed limits.

Our party turned out to be a cheerful mix. There were two elderly Australian ladies travelling together, a group of three from Melbourne—Steve assured us this was not their fault—a visitor from New Zealand, a family of four from Chennai, and a few others whose names escaped me almost as soon as everyone had introduced themselves.

Steve had an eye for the comic for nearly everything that crossed his path, including the traffic. When a young fellow sprinted across the street in pursuit of a tram only to execute an abrupt about-turn, Steve threw both hands into the air and exclaimed, “Dude! Dude! You’re a pseudo-Australian.”

A little later, as we passed Allambe Memorial Park, a sprawling cemetery, another opportunity presented itself.

“There is a rule,” Steve announced with mock seriousness, “that nobody living on the Gold Coast can be buried in Allambe Memorial Park. Can anyone tell me why?”

He allowed the silence to linger just long enough.

“Because the living can’t be buried.”

The groans that followed merely encouraged him.

By now, the audience was under his spell, and Steve unfolded the day’s programme. We would explore the subtropical rainforest of Natural Bridge, climb to Wunburra Lookout for panoramic views, and finish in Springbrook National Park. Along the way awaited waterfalls plunging through volcanic rock, rainforest trees descended from Gondwana, sweeping mountain vistas and, provided we didn’t bother him too much, a couple of loo breaks.

Just when the itinerary had begun to sound idyllic, Steve added one final attraction.
“Oh, and I’ll introduce you to the suicide plant.”

According to Steve, being stung by the suicide plant was like being burned with acid and receiving electric shocks at the same time. Hospitals or medicine could do nothing. Bathing with cold water renewed the pain, and the agony would return again and again for months, maybe years. Its toxin was so overpowering that horses had leapt from cliffs after merely brushing against it. There were accounts of people having shot themselves to death to escape the pain.

There was a long silence on the bus as everyone absorbed this news. What seemed like an ordinary sightseeing excursion had acquired the aura of an expedition. We were no longer merely driving towards another tourist attraction. We were entering one of the oldest surviving rainforests on Earth—a world of ancient trees whose ancestors had shaded dinosaurs, waterfalls spilling through volcanic caves and cliffs, and a plant whose reputation alone commanded respect.

With Steve’s running commentary continuing unabated, the suburbs gradually gave way to open country, and soon we arrived at our first stop, Hinze Dam, whose vast reservoir supplies much of the Gold Coast’s water.

Here, Steve displayed the first chink in his armour. The genial comedian briefly gave way to a drill sergeant as he announced that the stop would last no more than five minutes—just enough time for a dash to the toilets and back.

A few of us managed to stroll onto the dam wall for a fleeting glimpse of the broad expanse of water stretching towards forested foothills. Above us, the sky wore broad swathes of white cloud, as though the day itself had every intention of remaining fair.

From Hinze Dam, we drove to Natural Bridge, one of the best-known sections of Springbrook National Park. Steve distributed sturdy umbrellas to everyone before striding towards the entrance, leaving little doubt that we were expected to follow.

The boardwalk led us almost immediately beneath a dense green canopy. Towering rainforest giants rose high above us, their crowns almost lost in the canopy. Lower down, graceful palms spread their arching fronds while vines and epiphytes clung to trunks already softened by moss. Ferns blanketed the forest floor, leaving scarcely a patch of bare earth in sight. Moisture hung permanently in the cool air, beading on leaves, railings and even our umbrellas.

The rainforest spanned on a scale that rendered ordinary human measures irrelevant. Standing beneath those towering trees, it was easy to understand why Springbrook occupies such a special place among the world’s rainforests. This was one of the few surviving fragments of the ancient southern supercontinent forests. Long before human beings appeared, before the Himalayas reached their present heights, before the Atlantic assumed its modern form, forests like these already covered Gondwana.

Suddenly, the giant trunks around us ceased to be merely impressive trees. They became living witnesses to a vanished world.

A short distance into the rainforest, Steve stopped beside an altogether unremarkable plant.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “meet the infamous Gympie-Gympie—the suicide plant.”

It looked disappointingly ordinary. A small sapling stood quietly behind the railing, hardly the sort of thing one would expect to inspire fear.

Steve seemed to anticipate the reaction.

“Don’t let the size fool you,” he said. “Every part of the plant is armed. The leaves and stems are covered with microscopic silica hairs. Brush against them once, and they’ll inject a toxin you won’t forget.”

He told us about a father and son who had picked up what they thought was a harmless dried leaf. Both had ended up in hospital, sustained by morphine and intravenous drips, yet still in agony.

The story sounded almost too extraordinary to believe. Later, while reading about the Gympie-Gympie, I found that far from being exaggerating, Steve had been restrained. Even its dead leaves remain dangerous for years, and some accounts warned that their brittle hairs can become airborne when disturbed. One could not help wondering what adversaries had compelled the Gympie-Gympie to evolve such astonishing chemical weaponry. Giant herbivores? Ancient marsupials? Perhaps even creatures that disappeared millions of years ago.

Australia’s notorious venomous fauna are famous enough, but here was a testimony that its flora had been engaged in the same evolutionary arms race. The rainforest seemed to hold within it memories of a far older world, one in which survival called for weapons far deadlier than modern life appears to require.

The walk to Natural Bridge was scarcely a kilometre, yet it felt like a journey through time itself. As towering eucalypts gave way to ancient rainforest, buttressed strangler figs mingled with coachwoods and Antarctic beeches, their branches woven high above. Below, palms, vines, tree ferns and mosses jostled for every scrap of space. Even after the rain had ceased, the forest kept dripping, as if unwilling to let go of the clouds’ lingering touch.

There’s something almost unreal about Natural Bridge. It’s a cave carved out of an old volcano, slowly shaped over thousands of years by nothing more than falling water. When you first see it, it’s hard to believe it’s actually there.

Step inside and look up, and you’ll find a waterfall dropping through a perfect hole in the ceiling — like the mountain quietly decided to let a little daylight in. It spills down into a pool of pale green water that looks still on the surface, though you sense something constantly turning over beneath it. Around you, the volcanic rock arches overhead, and the walls glisten with damp in a way that makes the whole place feel ancient. A few boulders sit scattered across the floor, worn smooth, as if they’ve simply been there forever.

The Natural Bridge is beautiful. But it feels like more than that — like you’ve wandered into somewhere private. Somewhere the light only visits, but the water and the stone have always called home.

Later, Steve told us that the cavern changed dramatically after nightfall. Its ceiling became home to thousands of glow-worms—actually the larvae of a tiny fungus gnat. Each larva emitted a blue-green bioluminescent glow and dangled sticky silk threads to ensnare small flying insects, turning the cave into what looked like a sky strewn with stars.

From Natural Bridge, Steve gathered us back and drove through the spectacular Numinbah Valley, pausing briefly at a quiet reserve surrounded by rolling pasture and towering escarpments. It looked the sort of place where one could happily spend an afternoon over a leisurely picnic or barbecue. Within ten minutes, however, we were back on the road, climbing steadily towards the Springbrook Plateau.

Our next stop was Wunburra Lookout, where on a clear day the sweep of rainforest carpeting deep valleys and rounded ridges unfolds before you. Beyond the forests, if visibility is good, the eye reaches all the way to the skyscrapers of Surfers Paradise.

We walked from the parking area to the lookout railing, expecting a sweeping panorama, only to find ourselves gazing into a world of whiteness. The rainforest, the escarpments and the distant Gold Coast had all vanished behind a dense curtain of cloud. It was disappointing for a fleeting moment, until we realised that this, too, was Springbrook: a place where rainforest, cloud, and escarpments are forever playing hide-and-seek, reminding visitors that nature is under no obligation to perform on demand.

When Steve steered us towards Purling Brook Falls, he admitted that he had little idea what the weather still had in store for us. There were subtle hints as well that this would be our final stop before the return journey to the Gold Coast.

“Finally,” he announced with characteristic optimism, “a lookout where you don’t need to walk very far before you hopefully see the waterfall.”

The drill sergeant had returned. The short walk to the lookout justified allowing us barely fifteen minutes, and this time, he was not even accompanying us. We lingered briefly at the Trailhead Information Board before setting off. It was too tempting to ignore.

A short, easy walk through open forest soon brought us to the Western Lookout, where Purling Brook suddenly abandoned the plateau in a single decisive leap, beginning its hundred-metre plunge into the gorge below. From across the valley, the waterfall appeared as a slender white ribbon stitched onto an immense wall of weathered basalt, its delicate thread providing the only measure by which those towering cliffs could be comprehended.

Although scarcely an hour’s drive from the Gold Coast, the gorge had an undeniable aura of remoteness, as though the modern world had quietly withdrawn beyond its rim. Shifting our gaze from the waterfall, we looked across a vast rainforest canyon whose slopes were clothed in an unbroken mantle of ancient green. Here and there, sandstone escarpments emerged through the foliage, as though the earth had briefly revealed its bones. Beyond them, ridge after ridge dissolved into a soft blue haze beneath the brilliant Queensland sky, while slow-moving clouds cast wandering shadows over the forest.

As is my wont, I began negotiating with the light. It is a negotiation I have learnt is usually weighted heavily in nature’s favour. The accumulated wisdom of seasoned photographers made fleeting appearances in my mind. “Best attempted during the golden hour.” “Always use a tripod.” “Long shutter speeds.” Then came the wonderfully pragmatic fallback: “F8 and be there!”

By the time I lowered my camera, most of our fellow travellers had already begun drifting away from the lookout. An innocent disagreement had meanwhile broken out among our little group.

“We should always move clockwise,” V declared.

R readily agreed.

T quietly protested.

Trusting a faint gut feeling, I found myself siding with T. It behoves mentioning here that R possesses an astonishing sense of direction, whereas I have a notable talent for becoming disoriented after merely stepping out of a lift or negotiating two sharp turns while driving. I remain convinced that by the time my turn came, Heaven had already run out of compasses. Nevertheless, something suggested that we ought simply to retrace our steps.

R remained unconvinced.

“There is no reason to go back,” she observed, pointing towards a group that had just disappeared along the eastern path. “They’re going that way.”

Outmatched in conviction, T and I surrendered.

The narrow earthen track curved gently ahead beneath tall eucalypts, bordered by ferns and low shrubs. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the canopy. It could have been any one of the delightful rainforest trails we had enjoyed throughout the day.

For the first several hundred metres, nothing appeared amiss.

Then both T and I raised the first red flags.

Steve had clearly described it as a short walk to the lookout. This was no longer feeling particularly short.

V remained confident. R continued marching with equal conviction. T and I exchanged increasingly doubtful glances. Yet the track kept stretching ahead, while the picnic area, our bus and Steve stubbornly refused to materialise.

Gradually, the rumble of the waterfall faded behind us, replaced by the softer sounds of the creek and the rainforest. The track curved around several bends before reaching a sharp hairpin turn and beginning a steady descent into the gorge. Open woodland gradually yielded to dense subtropical rainforest. The air grew cooler. The light beneath the canopy dimmed noticeably.

Stone steps appeared.

Then timber stairways.

Then more steps.

By now, we had probably covered well over a kilometre.

Even R was beginning to have doubts.

Quite without intending to, we seemed to have crossed an invisible boundary between sightseeing and bushwalking. The lookout had presented the rainforest as a panorama; the circuit had quietly admitted us into it. With every descending step, the gorge appeared to swallow us a little deeper.

Presently, we encountered a young Indian couple adjusting an alarmingly full red backpack. They looked every bit prepared for a serious day’s hike. Before we could stop ourselves, all four of us began asking, almost simultaneously, how to get back to the picnic area.

They exchanged sympathetic smiles.

“No,” one of them said softly. “You’re on the Purling Brook Falls Circuit.”

To remove any residual hope, they produced a map on their phone and pointed out our exact location.

Reality arrived rather abruptly.

Returning to the picnic area would now take at least twenty minutes. Completing the circuit would take much longer. Meanwhile, Steve would almost certainly report four missing tourists before departing without us.

Our handbags, complete with our passports, were still sitting comfortably inside the bus. That settled the matter.

We turned around immediately and began climbing back uphill at a considerably more determined pace than we had descended.

After negotiating the sharp bend, we were confronted by something none of us remembered passing before—a fork in the track.

That finally persuaded us it was time to seek outside assistance.

Fortunately, mobile reception had survived where our navigation had not.

V called the tour company to obtain Steve’s number. We stood silently while the call connected.

When he answered, her opening sentence was admirably concise.

“Steve… we’re lost.”

He patiently guided us over the phone as we retraced our steps, choosing the left-hand branch we had instinctively believed was correct.

Further ahead, we caught sight of what appeared to be civilisation—a house standing beyond a broad clearing, perhaps even a road. R briefly considered making for it. I thought better of the idea. One never knows what awaits within a private property. A pit bull, perhaps. Or, worse still, a perfectly friendly resident accompanied by an enthusiastic pit bull.

Fortunately, neither proved necessary. Few sights have ever produced greater collective relief than seeing the lookout emerge once again through the trees. We all but broke into a trot for the final stretch towards the Gwongorella Picnic Area.

Our fellow travellers were scattered around the parking area, chatting in small groups. One after another, they began shaking their heads in relief as we emerged from the forest.

A considerable burden appeared to lift from Steve as well. With impeccable understatement, he observed, “The Purling Brook Falls Circuit wasn’t part of today’s tour.”

Neither, fortunately, was getting lost in the Bush.

As if to make up for a small part of his entourage unexpectedly turning into bushwalkers, Steve was at his chirpiest on the drive back. The bus soon dissolved into an animated discussion on cricket as we rolled on. IPL loyalties were declared with evangelical fervour, while I confessed to being an old-fashioned devotee of Test cricket and the fifty-over game.

“What do you make of Virat Kohli?” Steve asked.

“One of the finest in the business.”

Perhaps noticing that the Nikon had scarcely left my shoulder all day, Steve abruptly changed tack.

“Who’s your favourite photographer?”

“It certainly isn’t me.”

As we descended from the mist-laden heights of Springbrook, the rainforest gave way to an emerald clearing alive with movement. Scattered across the grass were red-necked pademelons, the shy little cousins of kangaroos, grazing quietly within a few bounds of the forest that sheltered them. Steve obligingly pulled the bus onto the roadside, but the animals were farther away than my 120 mm lens cared to admit. This was unmistakably the territory of a 600 mm telephoto.

“Got them?” he called out.

“Like a traveller with a camera.”

“And a wildlife photographer?”

“With about another four hundred and eighty millimetres.”

He grinned. “Then you were better off in the bush.”

(Continued in All That Light in Sydney)