Nature guide, photographer and documentary maker Glen Threlfo has spent four decades telling stories to famous (and not so famous) guests of O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat. Jo Stewart learns more about what makes this little nook of Queensland so remarkable. 

Forty years is a long time to spend at one workplace, but when your ‘office’ is the subtropical paradise known as Queensland’s Scenic Rim, it’s no hardship for someone like wildlife-loving Glen Threlfo. In fact, working in nature may just be the elixir of life. 

“Unless I look in the mirror, I still feel like I’m in my 30s,” says the septuagenarian storyteller who has entertained, educated and enlightened guests at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat since 1980.  

As a native wildlife hotspot home to an astounding 500-plus waterfalls and 320 kilometres of walking tracks, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lamington National Park (Woonoongoora) has been inhabited by the Aboriginal people of the Yugambeh group for tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement. Today, it’s a magnet for nature photographers, filmmakers and more recently, Instagrammers.