Minerva Hills National Park

Author & Photos: Glenn Leiper

Published: Journal March 2021

Image Above: Mount Zamia viewed from near Springsure

In early September 2020, with a strong desire to visit some districts with a different diversity of plants, a friend and I commenced our four day inland trip with an overnight stay at springsure (roughly 320km west of Gladstone) followed the next day by a drive up to the summit of Mount Zamia. This rugged, rambling, multipeaked mountain stands out in the Springsure district and is part of the Minerva Hills National Park. Formed by volcanic activity, Mount Zamia overlooks Springsure, only 4km away and is a tourist attraction with even a vertical plug section of the mountain, Virgin Rock, floodlit so that its features can be readily seen at night.

With the mountain dominated by trachyte and rhyolite, there’s a distinctive diversity of plant species which is typical of these volcanic soils. Eucalypt woodlands dominate the slopes and ridges, while denser shrubby vegetation occurs on some shadier slopes, gorges and drainage lines. On the cliff faces there are typically gnarled and stunted shrubs and trees with also some hardy herbaceous species. The lower slopes have large numbers of the distinctive Macrozamia moorei, the tallest of the Macrozamias, with some specimens up to about 5 or 6 metres tall.

Macrozamia moorei Moore's Cycad

Returning along the rocky track from Skyline

We arrived to find the mountain in recovery after a fire, probably earlier in the year, with dense herbaceous species in some areas after the recent rains but also some almost bare slopes and ridges now devoid of the usual shrub layer. The dirt road was in good condition and takes you right up to the top of the mountain from where you can take some short walks out to the four lookouts and also stop for a bite to eat at the picnic shelter.

Some years ago, a local native plant Native Plants Queensland, March 2021 enthusiast, Beverley O’Keeffe, published a booklet 'Some Shrubs and Trees of Springsure District Central Queensland' (without photos and now out of print) that included Mount Zamia. This book was handy for us to help identify some of the species we were uncertain about and also to alert us to what we might find.

Some of the walks take you through heath vegetation which would be quite colourful in a good season. There were splashes of purple (Dampiera adpressa, various prickly Solanum species and a Coleus), pink (the stunning Commersonia johnsonii in masses roadside, and a Tephrosia species), white (Leptospermum neglectum, an Olearia daisy, Calytrix tetragona and Teucrium corymbosum) yellow (a couple of Senecio species, and massed tall Podolepis longipedata) and red (Melaleuca chisholmii). The views from the lookouts were quite stunning as were the views along some of the tracks to these lookouts.

I’ll be returning at some point when the shrub layer has grown back and there’s been some rain, as this mountain with its easy access and great plant diversity is well and truly worth exploring.