Spicers Peak Nature Refuge

The Scenic Rim is a semi-circle of mountains about 110 km south-west of Brisbane, Queensland's capital city.

The seemingly impassable ranges and imposing peaks remain mostly in their natural state. They are clad with vegetation ranging from subtropical rainforest to open forest and montane heath. This is a World Heritage Area: Gondwana Rainforests of Australia.

Part of this Area is the Main Range National Park, through which we walk on Day 1. For the remainder of the walk we traverse the Spicers Peak Nature Refuge and Cattle Station to Spicers Peak Lodge for the last night.

Spicers Peak Nature Refuge

The 2000 ha Spicers Peak Nature Refuge has a breathtaking and diverse landscape and adjoins the Main Range National Park. It protects ten regional ecosystems, five of which are endangered or of concern, and twenty-seven fauna species identified as at risk.

This area is of significant conservation value and is protected in perpetuity through a Conservation Agreement between the owner and the Queensland Government. This binds all future owners and those with an interest in the land to conserve the area’s significant natural and cultural resources, and provide for the controlled use of the Land’s natural resources for livestock production, eco-tourism and adventure activities.

The most distinctive features of the Nature Refuge are the twin sentinels of Mt Mitchell ‘Cooyinnirra’ and Spicers Peak ‘Barguggan’. For many thousands of years the Aboriginal people must have looked in awe at these twin peaks. Their presence had minimal impact on the natural environment. They split, dried and soaked the leaves of the native rush, Lomandra longifolia in water, before weaving into baskets. They also used the inner bark of the Stringy Bark, Eucalyptus eugenoides, as fibre for bags and nets. The grass tree, Xanthorrhoea australis, resin was used for stone axe glue. Hunting was difficult in the mountains and most game was killed for food on the high plains to the west and coastal plains east of the mountains.

In the ranges nearby there are approximately fifty native mammal species. These include the iconic Australian mammals such as the koala, dingo and the Platypus. In addition there are three types of possum, five gliders, seven rats and mice, and nine kangaroos and wallabies, fifteen different bats and eight small mammals such as bandicoots.

This mountain range was a barrier to contain the early convict settlement at Moreton Bay (today’s Brisbane City). Peter Spicer was one of the first convict overseers of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement (Brisbane of today), when sometime between 1824 and 1827, the Peak was named. The range had not been breached to explore the inland area. It was thought at that time that rivers such as the Brisbane flowed from an inland sea or marsh.

Allan Cunningham, a British botanist/explorer had explored the Brisbane River with John Oxley in 1824. In was not until 1827, after leading pack horses inland from near Sydney for six weeks, Alan Cunningham climbed onto the Spicers Peak Lodge Plateau on 11th June and took compass readings on prominent peaks to the East, including Mt Warning on the Pacific coast. He came from a campsite about 9 km south west of the Lodge Plateau in the Swan Creek valley. Only days before he had named the expanse of rich pastures he had traveled through, the Darling Downs, after the then Governor of New South Wales and his employer.

The squatters and their sheep followed in the 1840s. Although they did well, they encountered many bad seasons. The drought year of 1877 and a very severe drought in 1902 – when practically all livestock died and ‘even the trees died’ were the worst.

The mountain gaps were more challenging than Cunningham had predicted. In the early 1840’s wool bales were sent down the range on slides since no more than “a single lane horse track existed”. Rocks and rain made the tracks quickly impassable.

Originally there was huge Stringy bark and Hoop Pine on ridges. The Rainforest timbers were given the name ‘Scrub wood”, and the only timbers considered to be of any great value were Red Cedar, White Beech and Rosewood.

Over subsequent years the advances of the pastoral and timber industry changed some of the vegetation. However on the remote valleys and ridges much of the vegetation remained relatively untouched.