Gold Coast Official spatial — evidence class · Gold Coast · QLD

Poondahra Falls

Track to nearby a published way, with steps to follow

Gazetted name Difficulty: Class 4 -28.21382, 153.27277 Springbrook National Park · National Park waterfall

Access verdict · Lawful, nothing to flag · weakest evidence in the chain: official spatial record

Public land — inside Springbrook National Park. A published track reaches it.

Being at this point is lawful on the records below. Getting there is a separate question, answered route by route — and each route carries its own verdict and its own caveats.

What this verdict means · what the evidence grades mean

On-ground signage and temporary closures override this page. Always.

What this place is A definition, then the record

A waterfall — a step in a watercourse steep enough that the water falls clear of the bed rather than running down it. The step is usually a band of harder rock the creek has been unable to cut through as fast as the softer rock below, so the drop moves slowly upstream over time and leaves a gorge behind it.

No watercourse the register names runs within range of Poondahra Falls. The layer maps far more creeks than it has ever named, so that is a gap in the record rather than dry ground.

The point falls inside Springbrook National Park, designated National Park. Official spatial — evidence class

The point falls inside Gondwana Rainforests of Australia , a property inscribed on the World Heritage List. That is where the ground is, and it is not a statement about who may walk there — access is the tenure question above. Official spatial — evidence class

The rock at the surface is basalt, mapped as Lamington Group (Tvl) , oligocene - miocene in age. The survey describes it as: Basalt, sub-alkali basalt with members of rhyolite, trachyte, tuff, agglomerate, conglomerate and andesite Official spatial — evidence class

The register maps one ecosystem over this ground, each with the share of it the register states.

100% — Complex notophyll vine forest on Cainozoic igneous rocks, usually at altitude less than 600m 12.8.3 · Least concern Official spatial — evidence class

No register records how far the water falls. What the contours record is this: the terrain rule fired here because the bed loses 15.0 m within 7.3 m along the watercourse — the test the rule applies, not the height of the fall. Its steepest single stretch drops 5.0 m over 1.1 m of ground — 4.4 m down for every metre along the bed. That is a floor and not a total: the contour interval is the smallest drop this layer can show, so the face is at least this steep and may be far more. Statutory inference — evidence class

On the record — what the registers actually say Sources, licences and dataset versions

What each register holds about this place
Claim	What the record says	Evidence
Name	"Poondahra Falls" is a gazetted register entry.	Gazetted — evidence class
Tenure	Resolved to Protected estate, recorded as "National Park".	Official spatial — evidence class
Parcel	5AP19371	Official spatial — evidence class
Council area	This place sits inside Gold Coast, tested against the boundary that council area publishes.	Official spatial — evidence class
Estate	Springbrook National Park , designated National Park. Declared under the Nature Conservation Act 1992; IUCN category II; 6,554 ha as gazetted; current gazettal 26 Mar 2020; first gazetted 3 Nov 1960; no encumbrance recorded.	Official spatial — evidence class
Watercourse	No named watercourse in the snapshot runs within range of this point. The layer maps many creeks it has never named.	—
Feature	Found by the terrain rule falls-rule/1, which fired because the bed loses 15.0 m within 7.3 m — the threshold it tests, not the height of the fall. Steepest stretch measured: 5.0 m over 1.1 m. A rule fired — nobody surveyed it.	Statutory inference — evidence class

Where it is

Map — covers Gold Coast

Map of Poondahra Falls and the starts of the 8 published approaches to it, over the parcels, corridors, estate and tracks around them.

Panning stops just outside Gold Coast, because the map archive is published one council area at a time. Every other council area Public Trails covers has a map of its own.

Every figure the map would draw — parcel references, distances, bearings and the crossing gap — is written out in full on this page, so nothing is only visible on the map. If the map does not load, nothing has been lost.

Is there a track to it Measured in plan and in section

The way passes this place Official spatial — evidence class

Warrie Circuit passes 49 m from the recorded point. There is 40 m of climb or drop between the two, read at a 5.0 m contour interval. The contours give the height between them and never which way round it is, so this is a separation and not a descent to plan.

The way comes close enough to be a way to this place without the record establishing that it ends at it. A register gives a feature one coordinate and a feature is not a point, so the two measurements above are the whole of the claim: how far off the way passes, and what height separates the two. Nothing here says the last of that gap can be crossed. Whether there is a lawful way to that way is a separate question, and the approaches below are where it is answered.

Approaches — one page each 8 published of 68 computed

68 ways in were computed and 8 are published here. The rest either reach the same ground from a few hundred metres away — the same drive and the same walk — or reach no lawful chain at all, which is only worth saying when nothing else does.