CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Murwillumbah it runs 978 km to Murwillumbah; allow about 16 h 51 of riding. The stops in between: Lamington National Park, Border Ranges National Park, Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve and Gilbert State Forest. Much of it runs through woodland.
Wollumbin, as the Bundjalung people call it, rises on the Queensland border like a huge broken tooth, the central plug of the eroded Tweed volcano. Captain Cook saw it from the sea in 1770 and named it Mount Warning, as a signal of the dangerous reefs offshore. At just over eleven hundred metres it is not high, but standing alone above a vast bowl, ringed by the cliffs of the old crater rim, it looks far greater. It is often said to be the first place on the Australian mainland to catch the sun each morning, though that depends on how you measure.
Read the complete Mount Warning National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Warning National Park is where the day begins. Next is Lamington National Park.
Ask anyone in Brisbane about Lamington and they will probably mention one of two roads, and both of them will make you work. The national park covers the high plateau of the McPherson Range on the Queensland side of the border, a huge expanse of rainforest, waterfalls and cliff-edged lookouts at the heart of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage area. It was named after Lord Lamington, a governor of Queensland at the end of the nineteenth century, who is said to have been less than thrilled to have a park, and later a cake, named after him.
Read the complete Lamington National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lamington National Park comes up about 128 km into the recorded legs. Next is Border Ranges National Park.
Twenty three million years ago a huge shield volcano stood over what is now the border between New South Wales and Queensland, and the Border Ranges are the remains of its northern and western rim. The volcano has long since eroded, leaving a vast caldera with the steep central plug of Wollumbin, also known as Mount Warning, rising in the middle, and a ring of cliffs and ridges around it covered in dense subtropical rainforest. The Border Ranges National Park protects a large part of that rim, and it is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a World Heritage Site that preserves forests whose ancestry goes back to the time when Australia was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
Read the complete Border Ranges National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 253 km into the recorded legs you reach Border Ranges National Park. Next is Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve.
Nothofagus is the botanical name of the southern beech, and the name of this reserve gives away its treasure: stands of Antarctic beech growing high on the McPherson Range along the Queensland–New South Wales border. These gnarled, moss-covered trees, some of them centuries old and sprouting from root systems far older still, are living relics of the forests that covered Gondwana before Australia drifted away from Antarctica.
Read the complete Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve, about halfway. Next is Gilbert State Forest.
West of Brisbane, the Great Dividing Range rises as a dark wall above the plains, and Gilbert State Forest sits on its western slopes, where the rainforest of the escarpment gives way to drier eucalypt woodland and the farmland of the Darling Downs. To the east lies Main Range National Park, with its high peaks and steep cliffs; to the west, the land opens out towards Warwick and the wide grain fields beyond.
Read the complete Gilbert State Forest write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gilbert State Forest sits at 489 km, about halfway. Next is back through Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve comes up about 611 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Border Ranges National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Border Ranges National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 725 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Border Ranges National Park. Next is back through Lamington National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lamington National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Lamington National Park, late in the day. Next is Mount Warning National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mount Warning National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 978 km.
Mount Warning National Park → Lamington National Park is 128 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lamington National Park → Border Ranges National Park is 125 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Border Ranges National Park → Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve is 113 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve → Gilbert State Forest is 122 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gilbert State Forest → back through Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve is 122 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mount Nothofagus Flora Reserve → back through Border Ranges National Park is 113 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Border Ranges National Park → back through Lamington National Park is 125 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lamington National Park → Mount Warning National Park is 128 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.