O'Reilly's

It looked as though it would be beltingly hot yesterday, so we thought why don't we get up into the mountains where it will be nice and cool. I've been wanted to go up to Lamington National Park for a while, so we thought why don't we do that; but the dogs would need to stay at home because they aren't allowed up there.

So we embarked on our little journey down to the border with New South Wales. Five minutes down the road we thought it would be nice to bring along the Explore Queensland book I got for Nicole, so we turned around and got that.

So we embarked on our little journey down to the border with New South Wales. Ten minutes down the road I realised that I'd forgotten to pack the baby rucksack, which would be an essential if we ever expected to make it more than a few hundred metres from the car in the few hours we had available to us. So we turned around and got that.

So we embarked on our little journey down to the border with New South Wales. Third time lucky, we managed to actually get outside the Brisbane City Limits, onto the Pacific Highway, onto Route 95 to Tamborine, onto Route 90 to Canunga. We missed the turning for O'Reilly's so we turned around and got that.

This road wound up into the mountains and the views up the valley were pretty spectacular. It ran over cattle grids, ran round blind corners and hairpin bends, came down to single tracks, all with a precipice to the left hand side, open air between us and the forested slopes beneath. "Pretty pretty pretty!" sang Eloise from the back seat.

The forest thickened around us us we climbed onto the plateau. It was like driving along a thin corridor through the dense forested wilderness around us. Eventually we arrived at O'Reilly's, an oasis of tourist tat in the middle of all this.

We ate a picnic there and Eloise attempted to feed some birds - bush turkeys and colourful budgie-like things - but mostly succeeded in scaring her off with her protean subtlety.

We headed off for a walk and made miserable progress through the cool rainforest along a boardwalk. Passersby cooed at Eloise who was her usual charming self, tree hugging and rock knocking, investigating the forest over the edge of the boardwalk, perhaps interested in the private life of leeches?

Eventually we arrived at the treetop walk where the boardwalk rises up into the forest canopy on suspended walkways. Ladders led further up into a tree where platforms gave views over the top of the forest over the plateau and mountains. Spectacular views.

Back at the O'Reilly's guesthouse cafe complex, we had a look at a sculpture of the eponymous O'Reilly who it turns out had, in 1937, rescued the survivors of an airplane crash in the rainforest wilderness.