Girraween National Park, Nature reserve in Queensland, Australia
Girraween National Park is a 117-square-kilometre protected area in Queensland's Granite Belt, 40 km south of Stanthorpe on the New South Wales border. Its landscape is built from Stanthorpe Adamellite granite, intruded 230–250 million years ago and weathered into domes, tors and balancing boulders. Mount Norman reaches 1,267 m, Castle Rock 1,112 m, and the park also holds the Pyramids, the Eye of the Needle and Turtle Rock.
Girraween was gazetted as a national park on 21 October 1966, part of a push to protect the Granite Belt's granite domes and balancing boulders. Aboriginal groups had used the granite overhangs for shelter and ceremony long before, and tin mining drew European settlers to the surrounding district from the mid-19th century. The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service now manages it jointly in spirit with Bald Rock National Park across the New South Wales border.
The name Girraween comes from an Aboriginal word meaning "place of flowers", and the park's spring wildflower displays are what it refers to. The area was used by Aboriginal groups for thousands of years, with the granite formations serving as shelter and ceremony sites and the spring water and plant and animal resources providing food through the year.
The park is accessed by several marked walking trails with varying difficulty levels leading to named landmarks throughout the area. Visitors should bring sturdy footwear and plenty of water, as there are no regular supply stations along the trails.
South Bald Rock and West Bald Rock, despite their names, lie inside Girraween in Queensland rather than in New South Wales's Bald Rock National Park. The park also shelters the Wallangarra whitegum (Eucalyptus scoparia), which grows only in this area, and in 1992 Taronga Zoo staff found the Bell's turtle (Myuchelys bellii) here.
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