15th Wedding Anniversary at O'Reillys
The 30th of November was our 15th wedding anniversary. Normally this is where an appropriately embarrassing wedding photo would be placed. Well none of our wedding photos have yet to make it into digital format so I'll insert a more recent photo.
I decided we needed to go away for this momentous occasion. I'd worked out a while ago he had 4 days off & had lined up my parents to take care of the kids. I then went about organising a suprise location for our anniversary trip.
We both enjoy photography, so I started looking for some kind of photography workshop. I came across the website for Trekabout Photography Workshops who just happened to have a 2 day workshop on the exact weekend Peter had RDO's. To top it off, the workshop was at O'Reilly's in Lamington National Park - where I'd been wanting to visit for a long time.
It was a suprise - right up until I had to tell Peter which way we were driving. Once I said we were going North, but not to the Gold Coast, he somehow remembered me at some stage saying I wanted to go to O'Reilly's & guessed straight away. Some photographic equipment as anniversary gifts gave away the rest of the suprise.
We had a fantastic time. O'Reilly's was wonderful. The room was great (we had a Mountain View room), the food in the resturant was great & the staff were friendly. We mostly wandered around the first day, went on the Tree Top Walk, fed the birds (wear a hat & long sleeves, I had scratches on my arms afterwards) & enjoyed the sunshine! The weather was mostly cool, misty & at night, rainy.
Michael & Mark from Trekabout were great, offering advice & running through some of the basics at each spot. At the first spot, the mist was rolling in & even though were were there to photograph the falls further around we were able to get some great shots - well until the mist obliterated the view. The cascades were very pretty - but very slippery due to the rain. I had to find a spot & stay there, a couple of people slipped over - fortunately no major injuries or damages to cameras. I did manage to put my foot in a large cold puddle & had to squelch around until lunchtime!
After morning tea we went into the rainforest to do some macro photography. There was lots of fungi quite close to the track. It started raining while we were there, fortunately the rainforest slowed it down but it was a bit tricky balancing umbrellas, cameras & tripods. We don't have macro lenses so ours weren't as spectacular as some of the others!
I had to get my wet shoes off at lunchtime, fortunately I'd packed my crocs. Had a fantastic pie at the Cafe and only just enough time to find dry socks & get my shoes back on before the next session. It was a session run by Mark on post processing using Photoshop etc.
Luke's Farm was our next destination. There are still cattle on this old farm + stockyards & old house. Lots of cool photo opportunities!
Bird photography was the last session we were able to go to on Sunday morning (it took us over 10 hours to get home mostly because of more rain). There is certainly no shortage of birds at O'Reilly's. Everytime we went out on our balcony they were there wanting food!!
We throughly enjoyed our time away, just wished it was heaps longer. We're already making plans to take the kids back!
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