Cunningham's Gap

A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away, little colonists were doing what they do and trying to colonise an enormous far off untamed land.

In order to open up the interior, the Great Dividing Range had to be crossed, and a mountain pass found to allow traffic between Brisbane and Ipswich (then called "Limestone" apparently) and the bounteous country which lay beyond.

A certain chap called Cunningham was the man who accomplished this feat, finding Cunningham's Gap, employing his obviously considerable powers of humility and creativity in naming it, and discovering the Darling Downs beyond, which are a venue for a lot of agricultural pursuits these days.

We thought it might be nice to go down there, as I've heard passing mention of Mount Cordeaux and what a beautiful spot it is. So off we toddled.

It's a little way past Ipswich, and a nice drive across lowlands then into foothills and eventually into a winding highway (the equally originally named Cunningham Highway) which wends its way ponderously into the mountains. Huge trucks use it ponderously to wend their way into the mountains too.

Actually we'd been down this road on our way to Sydney, and recalled that when we crossed the mountains was when the radio became really really crap.

However, at the top of the mountain pass is a National Park called the Main Range National Park. The mountains were formed by the erosion of an ancient supervolcano, leaving volcanic plugs behind, so like the Glass House Mountains there are some unusually shaped outcrops, but they are named after parts of ships, strangely, like the Prow and the Funnel. The mountains themselves have more entertaining names like Mount Mistake and Mount Barney.

So we stopped off at a little picnic spot where we had lunch and watered ourselves, then parked again at a little car park and headed up a path which meandered into the heavily forested mountainside, and once again we were in thick rainforest. Which was nice.

The path made its way up to a nice lookout which gave us commanding views east over the lowlands we had traversed. We continued around the circuit, and presently Eloise, who was going great guns on the old walking front, crapped herself.

So we hurriedly completed the circuit walk we were on. And Eloise did seem to be in a hurry, she jogged down the hill giggling away to herself and had to be prevented for hurling herself headlong over the rocky precipice to her untimely doom. Although that might be putting it a trifle dramatically, there were railings actually.

And we drove round to another little mountain pass, up some dirt tracks to a Pioneers' graveyard which was almost completely unremarkable, other than the fact that the toilet there had a door that was sprung on a bicycle pump, and Nicole had the bejeezus scared out of her when she thought it was a snake.

We aborted a trip to another lookout as the road was a little hardcore for the car.