Qualla: Tamborine National Park

Tamborine National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Batsv, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1908, before most of the world had decided that wild places were worth keeping, a patch of rainforest on a plateau south of Brisbane was set aside and called a national park - Queensland's very first. The Witches Falls section earned that distinction on 28 March 1908, gazetted under the brand-new State Forests and National Parks Act of 1906. It made Tamborine not just a Queensland landmark but one of the earliest national parks on Earth, a place where the idea of protecting nature for its own sake took early root in Australian soil.

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Image: Batsv | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tamborine National Park: A Mountain Cut Into Fragments

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron Korrel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tamborine National Park is not one forest but fourteen. The protected area is scattered across fourteen separate reserves, threaded between villages and small farms, sprawled over the plateau of Tamborine Mountain and tumbling down its foothills. The tableland runs eight kilometr...

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Image: Ron Korrel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tamborine National Park: Born of a Volcano

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donaldytong, CC BY-SA 3.0. The plateau itself is the leftover of a cataclysm. Around 20 to 23 million years ago, a vast shield volcano centred on Wollumbin - Mount Warning, to the south - poured out layer upon layer of basalt lava, building a dome that once stood two kilometres high and a hundred kilometre...

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Image: Donaldytong | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tamborine National Park: The Country Beneath the Name

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniela, CC BY 2.0. Long before any gazette notice, this was - and remains - the country of the Yugambeh and Jagera language groups, with the Wangerriburra people connected to the eastern reaches of the Scenic Rim. Names like Joalah, meaning place of the lyrebird, carry that older knowledge into the...

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Image: Daniela | CC BY 2.0

Tamborine National Park: An Ark of the Scenic Rim

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Figaro, Public domain. For so modest a footprint - just 11.6 square kilometres - the park carries an outsized share of life. It provides habitat for 85 percent of all the fauna species and 65 percent of the flora found across the wider Scenic Rim region. In the green half-light beneath the canopy you m...

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Image: Figaro | Public domain

Tamborine National Park: Walking the Water

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. Water is the park's recurring character. At Cedar Creek, north of North Tamborine, the Cedar Creek Circuit - a 3.2-kilometre loop - follows the creek through cascades, rock pools and stands of hoop pine, where the falls spill gently rather than thunderously into a shaded gully. A...

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Image: Shiftchange | CC0