Park of the Month – April 2026 – National Parks Association of Queensland

APRIL PARK OF THE MONTH

Tamborine National Park (The Knoll section)

Join us at The Knoll section of Tamborine National Park on Saturday 18 April 2026 and explore the green behind the Gold Coast.

Step into a world of lush, verdant subtropical wonder at Tamborine National Park, where stately flooded, spotted and scribbly gums stand sentinel over the fertile plains of the Gold Coast Hinterland and waterfalls tumble into rocky creek beds. With impressive views, cool cascades, and ancient subtropical rainforest found throughout the six sections of this stunning park, it’s easy to see why it was Queensland’s first National Park, with the Witches Falls section set aside in March 1908.

Tamborine National Park’s rich volcanic soils were laid down millions of years earlier, when flows from the Tweed Volcano covered the landscape. Today, this substrate nourishes dense rainforest of strangler figs and piccabeen palms that form a shady canopy above. Stroll in the dim light, keeping your eyes peeled for rainforest fruits, snails, skinks and land mullets on the mossy, humous-strewn forest floor, which keeps fungi like the anemone stinkhorn and the glow-in-the-dark green pepe damp and fruiting. In sunnier positions, on the ridgelines where the tall eucalypts dominate, a dense understorey of wattles, kangaroo grass, wildflowers and ferns lines the walking path, concealing red-necked pademelons (listen for the “thump” of their warning calls), yellow-footed antechinuses, and even the Albert’s lyrebird. Above, pardalotes and black-cockatoos nest in the tree hollows.

While no camping is permitted in Tamborine National Park, plenty of B&Bs and chalet accommodation nearby attract long-weekenders. The Park’s six sections all offer walks of varying lengths. Check out the walking map here and be sure to visit them all.

Discover. Connect. Protect. Enjoy

Park of the Month is a key initiative of the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) and NPAQ’s Parks Connect program. We’re passionate about parks, and by sharing decades of knowledge from committed volunteers, conservationists and National Park Rangers with local communities and visitors, we hope Queenslanders from all walks of life will fall in love with our amazing wild places.

Watch for stands of forest she-oak (a vital food tree for the vulnerable glossy black-cockatoo) and for the pink-flowering lacebark, a food plant for the tailed emperor butterfly’s pupae. If you’re lucky, you’ll also see the vivid green-black-and-yellow flash of the male Richmond birdwing, Queensland’s largest subtropical butterfly species. If you’re especially observant, you may even spot a lyrebird or a bizarre katydid known as a Phricta, which belongs to a genus of insects found only in the rainforests of eastern Australia.