Mt Tamborine is about an hour south of Brisbane by car, 30 minutes north of the Gold Coast. It’s a popular tourist area in the mountains with many arty stores and great views of the coast.

Mount Tamborine National Park is not a large single park but several smaller ones scattered throughout the region. It has 6 short walks with approximately 20km of trails between them. Today I’ve decided to walk all of them.

Maps are owned by and used with courtesy of Queensland Government.  Please visit that site for more detailed information on hiking in this region.

Palm Grove and Jenyns Circuits – 5.4km
For my first walk of the day, I chose the hardest of the trails in Mt Tamborine. When I say hardest, I mean in a very easy kind of way. The rocky path meanders through the tall thin trees with plentiful small creek crossings. There are views to the south of Springbrook National Park and The Cougals. In this part of the National Park I saw the most wildlife, with several wallabies feeding near the entrance and an Iguana who started climbing a tree when he saw me before changing his mind and just sitting on the trail staring at me.

Curtis Falls and Joalah Circuit – 4.2km
Similar to Palm Grove, but without the animals. Much of the trail is sealed and was the most popular track of the day for visitors. The trail heads to a lookout at Curtis Falls, then along the stream where it crosses it at two places on concrete bridges.

Witches Falls Circuit – 3.4km
Witches falls was the first established National Park in Queensland. The rocky dirt trail leads along the road line at the top of the park, past a grave yard before plunging down a steep hill to the waterfall at the bottom. The lookout is set just to the side of the rocky waterfall and gives a partial view.

Knoll Walking Track – 2.6km
The Knoll starts off at the top of a knoll (surprise!), with a lookout to the west towards Brisbane city. The track begins fairly typically to the rest of the National Park, a rocky track heading through the rain forest. It meanders down the knoll to a lookout at the top of a cliff overlooking a waterfall. You can walk around to the top of the waterfall and stand on the rocky edge watching the water flow down to the pool below while looking out across green hills to the west.

Cedar Creek – 1.2km

While only a very short and sealed track, the waterfall at Cedar creek is the best of the day. The water holes at the bottom are good locations for swimming in the warmer months (which is most of the year in Queensland). The path meanders down the mountain, stopping at lookouts before arriving at the bottom. A less sealed track continues along the river to another, larger water hole.

Rainforest Walk – 1.4km
For my last walk of the day, the rainforest walk is just that, a walk around a rainforest. I suggest doing this walk first as beyond the rainforest, there’s not much else to see. In saying that, the short rocky track is not a bad walk and there were a couple of large strangler figs along the way. The rocky dirt track was fairly easy.

The Trail Wanderer

After climbing the Mount Mitchell Peaks a couple of months ago, I decided to take my hiking group to another of the hikes in the same area.  I  set this up a couple of weeks before I went to Tonga and on my return discovered more than 50 people had registered.

I set the Aratula petrol station as our meeting place, about 10km from the beginning of the trail, making it easy for everyone to find.  While 50 is a lot for a hike, I expected a third to pull out, but a total of 45 showed up.  I discovered another group of 26 would also be on the trail also, so it was going to be busy.

Because of the lack of parking at Cunningham’s Gap, I suggested car pooling, so leaving some cars behind, we set off for the trailhead. The Mount Cordeaux and Bare Rock trail is 12.6km return or about 4 hours. It’s a Class 3 (well defined wide dirt track) with points of Class 4 (rocky defined path).

There are several trailheads leading off from the car park and I ensured we were heading along the right one before we headed off. The initial trail is a small circuit that connects all of the other trails together.  We walked along this on a wide dirt track to a lookout.

We continued along the circuit trail until we found the turn off to Mount Cordeaux and headed along it. The track began climbing immediately. The track zig-zagged up the side of the mountain to a point where the vegetation cleared and the western peak of Mount Mitchell could be seen across the gap.

About 4km into our climb and at the base of the great rocky face of Mount Cordeaux the trail forked.  We took the path to the right on a rocky path around the side of the mountain to a lookout, climbing stone steps to get there.

The lookout is a fairly large flat rocky area with plenty of room for our numbers. We stopped for a break, enjoyed the view across the valley to Lake Moogerah and Mount Greville – the next group hike I intend to arrange.

After 15 minutes, I led the group back to the fork and we continued along the trail around the other side of Mount Cordeaux on rocky steps.  We continued across a short saddle and into a throng of trees before the trail began to climb steeply.  The climb was fairly brief and we soon emerged onto Bare Rock, a large area similar to the lookout with views north along the Main Range.

Being late winter, I had expected it to be a little blustery, but we’d been lucky up to this point. Once at the top, however, the wind picked up and it cooled down. The group stayed for about half an hour, eating lunch and talking until the wind got too much and we set off down again.

The climb to Bare Rock was not particularly hard and with so many people, was slow going. The trip down was quicker, with most being a gentle meander heading back towards the car park.

The hike turned out to be a success with everyone enjoying themselves. To celebrate, 20 of us headed to the Aratula hotel for a beer – a must following a hike – before heading home.

Next I’m back to my lone wanderings, the many short trails of Mount Tamborine.

The Trail Wanderer.

The Main Range National Park is a section of South East Queensland’s Scenic Rim – a quarter circle of mountains attributed to the prehistoric Tweed volcano that existed here over 23 million years ago. The Main Range is about 115km inland from Brisbane and has plentiful walking tracks along its length.

This last weekend, while passing through the Main Range, I had a free morning so stopped at Cunningham’s Gap – the location where Cunningham Highway cuts through the mountains. Cunningham’s Gap is the starting point of several well-defined and more casual walks.

The Major Mitchell Peaks is a 10.2km, 3.5 hour walk, perfect for the time I had. The beginning of the trail starts opposite the car park and meanders its way up the side of the mountain along a forest path.

The closeness of the forest gives the illusion that the trail is fairly flat, but it’s not.  It’s only the last few hundred metres that the trail begins to climb more steeply, with steps cut into the rock.

The views to the east are fantastic with the road winding through the forest.  Lake Moogera can be seen between Mt Greville on the right and Mt Edwards.

To the north, Mt Cordeaux.

The trail heads back into the forest as it rounds the Western peak and emerges at the top of the Eastern peak, a short pinnacle of rock that’s been paved to prevent further erosion. I basked in the winter sunshine eating lunch with views in both directions.

I would have stayed longer but the occasional icy gust quickly chilled me. The return walk passed quickly and the tranquillity of the trail was broken by the harsh sounds of trucks going past on the Cunningham Highway.  On reaching the highway, I returned to my car and continued on my trip.

The Lone Trail Wanderer