BORDER RANGES NP
WE’VE snuck south across the border (excuse the pun) for our final Brisbane weekend destination, and with good reason: the 31,680-hectare Border Ranges NP is only 2.5 hours from Brisbane, is World Heritage-listed for its range of rare and endangered wildlife and flora, has one road (Lions Road) that takes visitors through landscapes ranging from Australia’s largest area of protected subtropical rainforest to truly mountainous alpine terrain, and offers brilliant camping.
Accessed from the north via the hamlet of Tamrookum (south of Beaudesert), Lions Road initially crosses the narrow ‘join’ of the park’s west and east sections. It is well-worth checking out the short track branching off the right-hand side just inside this narrow section, as it leads 200m down to a picnic area that offers views over the Border Loop railway line. This was an engineering marvel in itself; crews of workers shovelled, dug and exploded their way through the mountains, building a tunnel to join the NSW and Queensland ends of the rail line together more than 80 years ago.
Once back on Lions Road, you continue south parallel to the western border of the eastern section of the park, before turning left onto Wiangaree Forest Road and entering the park proper, where you pay your vehicle/visitor registration fees (see nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-apark/parks/border-ranges-national-park for all fees and other info). The popular Sheepstation Creek campground is just to the north of the entrance and provides access to a number of short bushwalks including the must-do Palm Forest Walk, a 2km loop along a long-disused bullock track to Brushbox Falls and then onto a large grove of the walk’s namesake bangalow palms. This campground’s sites are well away from each other and screened by natural vegetation, making it a great ‘base camp’ for maximising the weekend’s exploration of this park.
Speaking of exploration – and for those super-keen bushwalkers – there is the much longer and more challenging