Qualla: Conondale National Park

Conondale National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. It was one of the strangest animals ever found, and the Conondale Range is where it lived. The southern gastric-brooding frog swallowed its own eggs, shut down its stomach acid, brooded its young inside its belly, and gave birth through its mouth. Science first met the frog in 1973 in these wet Queensland gullies. By 1981 it was gone, vanished along with the southern dayfrog that shared its streams, both presumed extinct within a single decade. The Conondale National Park guards the rainforest they lived in, 35,648 hectares of gorge and ridgeline in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, a green ark for the rare survivors that remain.

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Conondale National Park: A Crumpled Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Casliber, CC BY-SA 3.0. Conondale is rugged in the old-fashioned sense, country that fights you. The terrain folds into gorges and valleys, with peaks climbing past 700 metres to Mount Langley at 868 metres, the highest point in the range and on the whole Sunshine Coast. Boulder-strewn creeks tumble bet...

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Image: Casliber | CC BY-SA 3.0

Conondale National Park: Jinibara and Kabi Kabi Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tnarg 12345 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before it was a park, this was a meeting place and a larder. The Conondale region was important country for both the Jinibara and the Kabi Kabi peoples, a pathway through the ranges and a place to gather food, above all the bunya pine, whose great cones drew gatherings from ...

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Image: Tnarg 12345 at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Conondale National Park: The Last Strongholds

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aviceda, CC BY-SA 3.0. What survives here survives because here is one of the few places left. The park is the critical refuge for the Richmond birdwing butterfly, Australia's largest subtropical butterfly, and for the vine its caterpillars must eat, the only plant on which the female will lay her eggs...

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Image: Aviceda | CC BY-SA 3.0

Conondale National Park: Walking the Range

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Hexasoft, CC BY-SA 3.0. For visitors, Conondale ranges from a gentle stroll to a serious expedition. The Conondale Range Great Walk runs 56 kilometres in a four-day circuit, climbing through rainforest and wet sclerophyll along old logging roads to the high country, then skirting the very headwaters of ...

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Image: User:Hexasoft | CC BY-SA 3.0