O'Reilly's - oh really!

Me 80 feet above the forest floor!

Picture the summit of Snowdon, North Wales on a chilly day in early spring. We were at a higher altitude in early spring in the middle of an Australian rain forest - this is O'Reilly's forest retreat founded by a bunch of Irish lads over 100 years ago (ancient history in Australian terms.) You could only get up there on a pony and trap via a precipitous trail - the winding road today is vertiginous to say the least and it required utmost concentration to keep on track especially when Vicky was saying 'Gosh look at that view!' every two minutes. Actually after a while she was telling me not to look (in a worried voice.)

One of the aforementioned Irish lads, Bernard O'Reilly, achieved heroic status in the 1930's by tramping several miles through the rainforest to pinpoint the crash site of a Stinson A airliner caught in a storm on the Brisbane-Sydney route. There were two survivors and the story made national headlines. The plane on the left sits outside the O'Reilly Guesthouse at the top of the mountain and the impression most people must get is that this is the plane that crashed - sadly it's only a replica which was made for an on location feature film about the disaster.

Plenty of unusual birdlife at O'Reilly's including a Regent Bowerbird - which is this cheeky chappie sitting above our picnic table waiting for a morsel - unfortunately for him we are law abiding citizens who took the 'No feeding the birds' sign literally.  Other Aussie birds that we saw were Logrunners, Rufous Fantails, Pied Currawongs, various scrubwrens and a Bush Turkey who pinched my sandwiches - Vicky chased after it and hunted it down and saved the day (she'd already eaten hers so I didn't have that to fall back on.) The Irish had a lot to do with this part of Australia and a family by the name of Lahey were also involved with pioneering round here - this photo below doesn't really do the scenery justice but we were at Romeo Lahey's viewpoint. In case you think that is a bit of an odd Irish first name Bernard O'Reilly's (see above) full name was Alfonso Bernard O'Reilly.

Don't step back!