Lamington National Park is located on the eponymous Lamington National Park is located on a plateau on the McPherson Range on the Queensland/New South Wales border, 110 kilometres from Brisbane.
The park is famous for its amazing nature - rain forest, ancient trees, waterfalls, breathtaking views from the mountain passes, a variety of animals and birds. It is part of the UNESCO World Natural Heritage site UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site "Gondwana Rainforest". Most of the park is located 900 metres above sea level, just 30 kilometres from the Pacific coast. The very plateau and mountains of Lamington and nearby Springbrook National Park are the remnants of the huge Tweed volcano, which is over 23 million years old!
For at least at least 6,000 years, these mountains have been inhabited by local Aboriginal people. The vanished tribes the wangerriburras and the nerangballum considered the plateau their home, but around 900 years ago, the Aborigines began to leave. The first Europeans to explore the park were Captain Patrick Logan and Alan Cunningham in the mid-19th century. Soon, intensive logging began here.
Many of the park's plants are not found anywhere else on earth, such as Lamington's myrtle, Mount Merino's eyebright and the hardy daisy that has survived here since the last ice age. You can also see endangered plants, such as the the spotted orchid.
The park is one of the most important wildlife habitats in the region, including rare and endangered animals, such as the coxen's fig parrot, eastern bristle-billed warbler, Elbert's lyrebird, the Richmond birdwing. The Lamington blue river crayfish is found only on the plateau Lamington in ponds and streams at 450 metres above sea level. Other rare inhabitants of the park include the cross-banded Flea frog, the giant striped frog and the cascading tree frog.
The park's "jewels" are more than 500 waterfalls, including Elabana Falls and Running Creek Falls in the southern part, which tumble down a nearly vertical canyon.
The park has a well-developed network of hiking trails - more than 150 kilometres were built during the Great Depression, and they are laid out in such a way that hikers never feel out of breath. Where hilly slopes were unavoidable, steep paths were replaced by steps. Some trails are quite short, others can take up to 7 hours to master. One of the most popular hiking trails is the 23-kilometre long Border Trail - runs right along the border between the states of Queensland and New South Wales along the top of the Macpherson Range.
