THE GOLD COAST HINTERLAND, Australia — A male whipbird whip-cracked his exotic call, triggering the screech from a yellow-tailed black cockatoo. A green catbird intoned a catlike yowl, followed by a domino of kookaburras cackling across the subtropical rainforest canopy.
West of the soaring skyscrapers of the Gold Coast is the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. It preserves more than 1,700 floral species and around 500 vertebrates.
Tangoing between the horseflies with local guide Royd Wallace, we spotted a variegated fairy wren nesting above a wait-a-while vine. Wallace demonstrated becoming ensnared by its barbs, his shirt pierced by the hooked tendrils. A towering flooded gum overlooked, cleverly peeling to avoid capture.
It’s all about life and death in this forest, where 3,000-year-old strangler figs choke their prey. Growing downward, they lattice around host trees, eventually rooting in the ground, where they digest nutrients from the dying tree. King of the forest here is the Moreton Bay fig that begins life when possums or birds excrete fig seeds onto branches in the canopy.
A micro-hurricane of shunted leaves revealed a land mullet: the largest of the skink family. “Those berries,” said Wallace, pointing, “from the giant pepper vine, are ripe when red. The Yugambeh aboriginal people dried and crushed them for bush food.” Nowadays, the pepper features on our dining tables.
We carefully arced around the notorious stinging tree. “You don’t want to touch that,” Wallace warned. “Those leaves sting even after falling.” We didn’t touch.
Walking along Springbrook Plateau, through remnant Antarctic beech forest 2,000 to 3,000 years old, we reached Best of All Lookout. From its elevated balcony, we looked at Mount Warning, the core of the extinct Tweed Volcano. The caldera below is the Southern Hemisphere’s largest.
Reaching Natural Bridge in the Numinbah Valley, we stepped down into its rhyolite and basalt cave. A waterfall tumbles through the roof of this striking geological sculpture, now photogenically impaled by a tree (courtesy of the January 2013 floods).
That afternoon I drifted along the nearly 1,000-foot-long steel bridge of Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk’s upper canopy. Volcanic soil sustains this 23-million-year-old ecosystem, with tree ferns being the oldest occupants.
The world’s tallest growing orchid, a yellow, leafless flower, grows here, as does the Christmas orchid, which reveals its splay of white flowers during December. “And this is the raspy root orchid,” said our guide Brendon, pointing. “However, it flowers just two days per year.”
Descending to Cedar Creek, lichen-encrusted boulders blistered the rock pools, where saw-shelled freshwater turtles and the elusive platypus reside. Farther on, we snatched glimpses of the rare, multicolored Richmond Birdwing butterfly.
By the leafy den of a regent bowerbird, we observed her dance seductively to attract a male. A scrub turkey snooped from behind its beak.
We halted, fixated, at a bizarrely sculpted foam-bark tree, gnarled into a corkscrew. Aboriginal people would create soap from the bark of this resourceful tree.
The hair-raising highlight on this wilderness walk was the free-standing Cantilever, which juts out 130 feet into this evergreen world. At 100 feet above the forest floor, the deck was tummy-flutteringly liberating.
A fusion of flavors
The next morning, I joined French-trained chef Terri Taylor at Tamborine Cooking School.
“My philosophy,” she said, “is to use traditional techniques to whip up healthy and delicious multicourse menus from the freshest local produce grown on our mountain.”
Taylor grows French beans, broad beans, beetroot, avocados, lettuce, herbs and a myrtle tree in her 2-acre garden.
The morning yielded floury faces, eggy hands and salivating tongues as we whipped, beat and spread until the dining table beckoned. Among other delights, we baked lemon myrtle chicken and Moreton Bay bugs wrapped in kataifi pastry.
Local Witches Falls wines complemented our creations. We all went blissfully quiet while devouring our pavlova wattle-seed roulade.
The afternoon became merry. “Welcome to Tamborine Mountain Distillery,” summoned a charming, wildly bearded character. Michael Ward welcomed us into his Tudorlike property, one of the country’s smallest yet most awarded family-run pot distilleries.
Up came the glasses, off came the lids and out poured the liqueurs, schnapps, vodkas and Eaux de Vie for tastings. Ward creates these elaborate spirits in handmade copper stills from the area’s abundant native fruit. Much is grown in the family’s orchards, enriched by volcanic soil and spring water.
“Quandong is sweet and bitter at the same time,” said Ward, laughing as he poured. “And you must try my Lilly Pilly Gin and Eucalyptus Gum Leaf Vodka. You won’t get a hangover! They’re chemical-free.”
Glasses chinked as Ward’s wife, Alla, showed us her painstakingly hand-painted bottles. “I do around 30 an hour,” she revealed. A wisecracker chipped in: “That’d make you pretty tipsy, darling.”
I left clasping a bottle of roasted pecan Wattle Toffee liqueur. “Cheers,” I gestured, to the sensory Gold Coast Hinterland.
Marie Barbieri is a freelance writer in West Lakes, S.A., Australia.
When you go
American Airlines flies from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Coolangatta (via LA and Sydney). aa.com
Where to stay:
Peppers Ruffles Lodge & Spa at Willow Vale. Stay in timber-featured rooms with louvers, inhaling eucalyptus-scented breezes and raw sounds of wildlife. Villas spoil you with L’Occitane shower products, port and chocolates. peppers.com.au/ruffles-lodge
Southern Cross 4WD Tours: sc4wd.com.au
Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk: rainforestskywalk.com.au
Tamborine Cooking School: tamborinecookingschool.com.au
Tamborine Mountain Distillery: tamborinemountaindistillery.com
Gold Coast Tourism: visitgoldcoast.com