As we wander through the subtropical rainforests of Springbrook National Park on Queensland's Gold Coast, it's impossible not to be awestruck by the sheer majesty of the scenery. These forests are living relics from the Jurassic Age and their 1800 million-year-old Hoop Pines, trunks scored with banded bark, emanate ancient wisdom that reaches into your soul.
For Dame Quentin Bryce, this is a place of renewal and wonder. She immerses herself in the unique aura of tranquillity that only nature can provide, and finds solace amid the giant mossy rocks, shimmering luminous fungi, and dreamy tapestry of towering trees, bright green ferns, and hanging vines and lianas.
Quentin, now 79, played here as a child, she and her husband Michael brought their own five children to the cascading waterfalls, and when the couple moved back to Brisbane in 2014 at the end of Quentin's Governor-General tenure, they regularly came to the mountains for bush walks. “The atmosphere, the swirling mist, and what the rainforest does when you step under that canopy is special,” Quentin tells me as she strokes the trunk of a 3000-year-old Antarctic beech tree.
"It's a source of great happiness in my earliest childhood memories because we used to have our holidays at Surfers Paradise when we were kids. It was sun and sand and beach, the beauty of that part of our world. But if it was a bit of a dull day, or we needed a bit of a change, we'd go up to Tamborine and to Springbrook and the rainforest. When my parents were old, they lived at Tamborine and my dad used to take our children, when they were little, on walks through the rainforest. It is absolutely magic!"
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