Binna Burra Lodge

Binna Burra sits on the rim of the Lamington Plateau in southeast Queensland, at the edge of the Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage Area, one of the largest areas of subtropical rainforest on earth. Antarctic beech trees, some hundreds of years old, grow a short walk from the lodge; below them, the escarpment drops into valleys of ancient fern and strangler fig. The Yugambeh people have held custodianship of these mountains for thousands of years, and after the 2019 Black Summer fires swept through, they were invited to lead a smoking and healing ceremony on the site.

Those fires destroyed the original 1933 heritage lodge and 42 of its 43 cabins. What survived, the Sky Lodge apartments, safari tents, a rainforest campsite, and a 1935 timber cabin that now serves as the bar, reopened within a year. A new heritage-style lodge is being rebuilt on the original site with state government backing. The first camp here was established by Romeo Lahey and Arthur Groom, who helped build Queensland's national parks movement, so bushwalkers could reach the rainforest without a multi-day trek from Brisbane. Trails still leave from the same trailhead near the Tea House, running from short rainforest circuits to full-day hikes into the escarpment. Trainee conservationists have replanted thousands of trees since 2019, and the Antarctic beech forest that gives Binna Burra its name, in Yugambeh language 'where the beech tree grows', still stands.