O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat: see Lamington National Park in comfort

The welcome is warm at Queensland’s family-owned O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat.

An Eastern Yellow Robin, one of the birds that visit O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat. Picture: Lee Mylne

Years ago, the newfangled toaster at O’Reilly’s was temperamental and guests kept burning their toast. So guesthouse owner Peter O’Reilly decided he’d man the toaster each morning to personally take care of everyone’s breakfast needs. The practice became something of a tradition, with other family members — these days most often 81-year-old Michael “Big Mick” O’Reilly — also standing guard over the latest toaster to ensure guests have a helping hand.

It’s a quirky personal touch much remarked on by those who stay at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat on the edge of southeast Queensland’s Lamington National Park. This year the property is celebrating its 90th anniversary and members of the fourth generation of the O’Reillys are learning the ropes at the family owned and operated business that has welcomed about 960,000 guests from across the world since Tom O’Reilly opened the doors at Easter, 1926.

Its early fame spread in 1937 when Bernard O’Reilly’s bushcraft skills resulted in the rescue of two survivors of the Stinson airliner crash in Lamington National Park, a feat of bravery and determination commemorated with a statue in the property’s grounds.

Today, it’s a far cry from the original humble log-cabin style “guesthouse”, as expansion over the years has created a more sophisticated “rainforest retreat”. Changing times and travellers’ expectations have led to an enhanced range of accommodation, experiences that include degustation dinners, and packages featuring hot-air ballooning and helicopter tours.

The original guesthouse rooms have been augmented by luxury canopy suites, some with four-poster beds; 48 spacious villas (privately owned but part of the O’Reilly’s accommodation stock) were added in 2007. Mary O’Reilly, a member of the third generation, is in the Rainforest Room when we drop by for sunset drinks. Like her cousin Shane, now the general manager, she grew up on the mountain, and the family business is in her blood.

The bar is in crow’s nest style, a balcony perfectly positioned for sundowners with a view or a pizza or light meal. But most guests prefer to take dinner in the original dining room, where the walls bear photographs of O’Reilly family members. After our evening meal, we join a guided bushwalk to see glow-worms working their magic on a rock wall in the rainforest. Discovered on an O’Reilly family picnic, it used to be a 7km walk to see these tiny pinpoints of nature but now it’s just a 15-minute stroll from the 4WD. While upgrades to the resort have seen many changes, including modern luxuries such as the Lost World day spa, where Georgia from Greece expertly soothes my aching muscles, some things haven’t changed, including the surrounding 20,000ha of subtropical rainforest, waterfalls and wildlife that make up the Green Mountains section of the national park.

O’Reillys have lived on the mountain since 1911, after brothers Tom, Norbert, Mick and Peter and their cousins Pat, Luke and Joe took up selections to establish dairy farms on the northern edges of the McPherson Range. Lamington National Park was proclaimed in 1915, with Mick O’Reilly becoming Queensland’s first park ranger.

Guests still largely come for nature-based activities, and it’s easy to see why. In the early morning silence of the rainforest, the distinctive whip-crack call of an eastern whipbird rings out. Our small group, waiting patiently on a bush path near the retreat’s entrance, perks up and naturalist Glen Threlfo smiles. He’s pleased that we’ll get a chance to see this elusive bird. Threlfo’s been leading wildlife walks at O’Reilly’s for 36 years. During an hour’s walk we are also enchanted with a sighting of an Eastern yellow robin and it’s easy to see why Bird Week each November, now in its 38th year, is a sellout. Another attraction is the Tree Top Walk, built in 1988. This suspension walkway, 15m above the ground, includes a ladder into the highest branches of a strangler fig.

When the second-generation brothers Vince and Peter contemplated retirement and looked to charge the third generation with the responsibility of carrying on the business, Peter’s son Shane returned from gaining hotel management experience around Queensland and in South Africa, to take the reins as general manager.

“In 1989, when I came to work here, my father was still carving the meat at dinner and Mum was making the cakes,” he says as we admire the view from another of the more recent innovations, the three-tier Moonlight Crag lookout overlooking the steep eucalypt forest of the Lost World and the Albert River, 609m below.

On our last morning, we take a pre-dawn drive down the mountain for a morning flight with Hot Air Gold Coast. The ballooning adventure finishes with breakfast at the Canungra Valley Vineyards, also part of the O’Reilly’s stable. The first vines were planted in 1999 and in 2003 the winery won its first medal, a coveted gold for the 2001 Reserve Shane Shiraz at the San Francisco International Wine Show. The vineyard’s cellar door, on the banks of Canungra Creek, is a restored homestead popular for weddings and weekend lunches or, better still, enjoy a gourmet picnic, complete with rug and a bottle of wine. Spotting turtles and eels, and just possibly one of the four platypuses that live here, makes for a bucolic afternoon.

• oreillys.com.au

Lee Mylne was a guest of O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat.