Qualla: Border Ranges National Park

Border Ranges National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kalyi1, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand at the edge of the Pinnacle and the ground simply falls away - a kilometre of air between your boots and the floor of the Tweed Valley below, with Wollumbin rising across the gulf like the core of the world laid bare. That is exactly what it is. The Border Ranges National Park rides the high rim of one of the largest erosion calderas on Earth, the ruins of a colossal volcano that erupted twenty-odd million years ago. Up here, on the escarpment, survives a rainforest so old it remembers the supercontinent of Gondwana - a green, dripping, primeval world that Australia has carried almost unchanged across deep time.

Image: Kalyi1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Border Ranges National Park: Rim of a Ruined Volcano

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Froggydarb at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Everything about this landscape was shaped by a single ancient catastrophe and the long aftermath of erosion. The Tweed shield volcano, centred on what is now Wollumbin/Mount Warning, once dominated the region. Over roughly twenty-three million years, weather and rivers stripped ...

Image: Froggydarb at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Border Ranges National Park: A Forest Out of Gondwana

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, Public domain. The park's rainforests are part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, and the phrase is not hyperbole. These are living descendants of the forests that covered the ancient southern supercontinent, and they shelter an astonishing concentration of life. Alon...

Image: Shiftchange | Public domain

Border Ranges National Park: The Tweed Range Scenic Drive

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Wigginton, CC BY-SA 4.0. The way to see the park is the Tweed Range Scenic Drive, a roughly sixty-four-kilometre gravel touring route - part of the wider Rainforest Way - that loops through the high country from Lillian Rock, between Uki and Kyogle, around to Wiangaree north of Kyogle. It is a road to ta...

Image: Alan Wigginton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Border Ranges National Park: Watching the Caldera Wake

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jody Oz, CC BY-SA 4.0. The finest hour in the Border Ranges is sunrise. From the Pinnacle lookout, the first light catches the crater escarpment, Wollumbin, and the distant coast all at once, and the enormity of the place finally makes sense - the rim you are standing on, the valley a kilometre below, ...

Image: Jody Oz | CC BY-SA 4.0