National Park DayPrint Page

The plaque commemorates National Park Day in March 1908 which was the date of the proclamation of Witches Falls, the first national park in Queensland. 

Queensland lagged behind much of Australia in the protection of its natural environment. In 1879 Australia’s first national park, National Park (now Royal National Park) was established 20 kilometres to the south-west of Sydney. Conceived as a place of ‘public recreation’, National Park consisted of 7500 hectares of bushland. A number of the other colonies followed suit: South Australia with Belair in 1891 and Victoria with Wilson’s Promontory and Mount Buffalo in 1898. While there were certainly activists lobbying hard for land to be set aside as a national park, Queenslanders had to wait until March 1908 for the first park, 131 hectares at Witches Falls in Tamborine, to be declared. It now forms part of the Tamborine National Park. Although only a small area it did signal a growing recognition of the need to preserve native fauna and flora, in this case against the incursions of agriculture. A more substantial park quickly followed with the declaration in July of 9000 hectares at Bunya Mountains. 

A NATIONAL PARK. The Governor-in-Council has decided to reserve as a national park an area of 324 acres, in the parish of Tambourine. The area in question is situated about a mile to the south-east of Tambourine Mountain.
Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser (Qld.),
28 March 1908.

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