Some people (and probably anyone in Australia) will be aware of the devastating bush fires in Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales over the last few days. Houses have been lost but at least there has been no loss of life yet. We are not personally affected. There are fires to the southeast of us. The westerly winds mean they are not headed this way but this afternoon we had a howling dust storm with winds of about 50 km/hr. It wasn't pleasant, but better than a fire. Everyone needs rain - desperately.
Anyway, back to the thread …. One of the high profile losses has been the heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge in the mountains behind the Gold Coast. Binna Burra is in a rain forest area although the predominant vegetation is what is known as wet sclerophyll forest. Binna Burra is/was a pleasant place to stay. In the last few years my wife and I have spent a few days chilling out at the Lodge on a couple of occasions. Yesterday the fires destroyed it. It will be rebuilt, but it is still a sad loss. The lodges we stayed in had external walls of beautiful slab timbers with shingle roofs. They blended with the environment. I guess that always carries a risk. Images of the burned out lodge are on the net. But here are a few of our memories (all shot with the Q, Q10 or Q7)
The late afternoon view from the paved patio area outside the cliff top dining room. It was a great place to take in the sunset while enjoying a glass of wine.
Typical wet sclerophyll forest. As well as the obvious flora it is teeming with bird and animal life.
A banksia. These are beautiful shrubs or small trees. As a side note - fire is generally needed to burst their seed pods and start the next generation. But 'cool' fires are the rule. The very 'hot' fires we are having at present can destroy everything.
Yellow-tailed black cockatoos in the canopy. The shot was taken with the original Q and an adapted Pentax/Cosmicar 8-48/f0-1.2 lens. The shot is heavily cropped because the cockatoos were high up and some way off. The Q performed brilliantly with the assistance of the very fast lens.
Mrs PJ1 leads me off on a rain forest track.
On our last stay at Binna Burra they put us in a two bedroom apartment (with the second bedroom in the loft). It had a small balcony and we took a pic for our grandchildren. They were planning to stay there with us at some time.
They were also renovating the lodges when we were there the last time. We bought a couple of shingles. Ah, well ... the thought was there.