Coomera Circuit

Location: Lamington National Park, South East QLD
Date: 1st February, 2015
Distance: 17.4 km
Time: 5 h 50 min

With all the rain we've had recently, it was a pretty easy decision to make Lamington NP our bushwalking destination last Sunday. What was harder was choosing a walk to soak up all that watery goodness. You are spoilt for choice when it comes to waterfalls walks, but Coomera Circuit is one of my favourites and, as we hadn't done the walk for a few years, it emerged victorious this time.

We arrived at Binna Burra only a little later than usual, just after 9am, but the road was chockers with parked cars, the likes of which I had never seen before. Was there some kind of wild event going on? I'm not sure where all the people were, but it turned out they were mostly not on Coomera Circuit as we only passed a few small groups during the day.

Walking in the rainforest was cool, although when the track passed through patches of drier forests we felt the sun beating down pretty hard. As a reward for these intermittent insults, the bush delivered us some beautiful rainforest, vibrant fungi and more giant skinks than I'd seen on the previous dozen trips here combined - and all this before meeting the first waterfall on the circuit.

What a marvellous rock!

Less than one and a half hours into the walk and we were gazing down into Coomera Gorge, an awesome sight to behold.

I never get tired of coming to Binna Burra for views like this

Yarrabilgong Falls topples 150 m down Coomera Gorge

The track meets Coomera River shortly afterwards, and for the next few km follows and crosses the river many times, delivering an endless march of cascades and waterfalls.

Crossing at the Coomera River

Bahnamboola Falls lower tier

Bahnamboola Falls (middle tier) looks more like an out of control
waterslide than a waterfall

Burrajum Falls

Trickling creek below Gwongarragong Falls

The river crossing after Gwongarragong Falls (just before Hobwee Creek) was deep enough that I had do de-shoe my runners and walk across barefoot (ankle deep most of the way). It turned out to be a good spot to both dry my feet and have lunch, particularly since sittable rocks at most of the other crossings were exposed to the hot sun.

Not a safe spot for rock hopping... best just to walk through it

Bower Bird Creek

...just awesome

Neerigomindalala Falls

Dad negotiating another river crossing

Once the waterfalls were gone, and in our usual habit, we rocketed along the Border Track back to Binna Burra, covering the last 7.6 km in under 2 hours, including a fairly long afternoon tea break at Joalah Lookout.

Looking across to the Araucaria Lookout track and beyond to the Springbrook plateau, from Joalah Lookout

On the home stretch