Hinterland ADVENTURE
Queensland’s Sunshine Coast is a subtropical playground of great natural beauty from its golden beaches washed by the Coral Sea to the verdant ranges reclining at the edge of the Great Divide. Those with a taste for adventure will not want to miss one of its best hinterland assets, the magnificent Conondale National Park.
This rugged 35,500-ha park in the Conondale Range embraces a network of crystal mountain streams that cascade through deep gorges, flanked by luxuriant rainforests and stands of towering eucalypts. Not only does this spectacular environment conserve critical habitats for rare wildlife, it also offers great opportunities for a wide range of outdoor recreation, from family camping to remote high altitude trekking.
“Nearly 800 species of native plants have been identified in widely different communities, such as subtropical rainforest, wet and dry eucalyptus forest, woodlands and palm groves.”
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
The spectacular Conondale Range originated as muddy sediment and silica-rich ooze in a deep ocean trench off Gondwana about 370 million years ago, when amphibians were just wading onto land where simple woody plants had not long evolved. Movements of the continental plates compressed sediment and crumpled the hardened
