Toolona Creek Circuit

Location: Lamington National Park (Green Mountains), South East QLD
Date: 31st May, 2014
Distance: 17.4 km
Time: 5 h 30 min

Wow! What can I say about Toolona Creek Circuit... this is probably the best day hike I've ever done! The weather was wet and miserable all day, making it the perfect time to hike at Lamington National Park. Under the forest canopy you are shielded from most of the rain, but the misty conditions make rainforest walking magical.

At the start of the walk I came across a bunch of hikers from a bushwalking group, which was fortunate for me because shortly after starting out on the Border Track we heard a distinctive bird calling, and someone pointed out it was an Albert Lyrebird. One of the blokes had a video camera and tripod, apparently on a mission to video all the major walks in QLD, NSW and Victoria... good luck! Sounds like a massive (and fun) undertaking.

20 minutes in, the Toolona Creek Circuit veers left away from the Border Track and heads downhill, then branches right away from  West Canungra Creek at Picnic Rock.

Track was a bit muddy in places

Looking upstream at Picnic Rock

A 5 minute walk from Picnic Rock is Elebana Falls, probably the most popular waterfall in the park - it's easy to see why. Finding a spot to view Elebana Falls required taking a 140 m detour from the Toolona Creek Circuit and hopping over a few very slippery rocks, but it was well worth it.

The path to Elebana

Elegant Elebana Falls

The next 2 to 2.5 hours of walking follows Toolona Creek, requiring many slippery crossings over mossy boulders, and passes more than a dozen stunning waterfalls. This section of the walk is really amazing and I stopped about every 20 m to take photos, even though it was raining and I was being attacked by an endless onslaught of leeches (do your worst rainforest...). It's difficult to describe how beautiful this area is, hopefully these photos can do it some justice.

Triple Falls

Looking upstream from Triple Falls

Dwandarra Falls

Burraboomba Falls

Chalahn Falls

More Chalahn Falls... it's pretty difficult to take a bad photo here

Yilgahn Falls

Toolona Falls

While winding past the last few waterfalls, the canopy opens up and the several thousand year old Antarctic beech trees begin to dominate the landscape. This meant two things for me: great photos and lots of rain. The poncho I picked up at the O'Reilly's guesthouse came in handy.

It's only about 10 minutes' walk from the final waterfall to the Border Track on the escarpment. A left turn here for 50 m brings you to Wanungara Lookout, which I'm sure would be a nice spot for lunch on a dry day. Instead it was wet and muddy, so I had lunch on the go and simply marvelled at the misty rainforest.

Magical Antarctic beech forest

Antarctic beech tree near Bithongabel

After passing Bithongabel, the highest point on the Border Track at 1199 m, the path veers away from the escarpment and it's all downhill to the car park. It took me a little over an hour of walking, including a few short stops to try and wriggle some sandwiches from my pack and eat them before they became waterlogged.

I also spotted a few different types of fungi on the Border Track.

This one kinda looks like a dim sim.

Despite taking over 500 (!) photos on this walk, it still took less than 5.5 hours (that's about one photo every 40 seconds...). I've been on other great waterfall walks at Lamington (both Albert River and Coomera Falls circuits are incredible) but this one outdoes them both, and I think you would be hard pressed to find a better rainforest walk in South East QLD.