Gold Coast Hinterland · Rankins Falls
Rankins Falls from Springbrook Road
Access verdict · tier 1 of 4 · confidence B (official spatial record, the weakest grade in the chain)
A lawful approach from Springbrook Road.
The chain below runs entirely across land the public has an established right to be on. It is a legal line, not a path: nothing here has been surveyed on the ground.
- 1 · Formal track A managed track on public estate, end to end. Walk it. This page is here.
- 2 · Public estate, no track Lawful to be there; unmanaged terrain and route caveats below.
- 3 · Unconfirmed No lawful chain could be established from the public record. No route published.
- 4 · No lawful route Enclosed by land the public has no right to cross. No route published.
On-ground signage and temporary closures override this page. Always.
Getting to the start The trailhead coordinate, not the feature
The start is at -28.19252, 153.26637
That is Springbrook Road, where the walk below begins — 700 m of it. Every link here goes to that coordinate and never to the feature itself, because a driving route to a waterfall is a driving route into the country above one.
- Google Maps one link for a desktop browser, Android or iPhone
- Apple Maps the default on iPhone and Mac
- Your own map app hands the coordinate to an installed app, offline ones included
-28.19252, 153.26637
The coordinate is where the recorded way begins, read off the same layers as the walk. Which roads reach it, whether they are sealed, gated, or open today, and where a car may lawfully be left are none of them things these records say — so treat the last few kilometres as unresearched, and the mapping service's route to them as its own work, not ours.
The chain, leg by leg Computed from cadastral geometry; never walked
| # | Runs along | Parcel / reference | Mapped along it | Distance | Bearing | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Track | Forestry Road | nothing mapped | 365.2 m | 36.7° NE | B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record |
| 2 | Track | Kuralboo Road | nothing mapped | 335.2 m | 327.9° NNW | B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record |
| Total | no way mapped | 700.4 m | Chain confidence B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record | |||
Every leg above is computed from cadastral geometry. Nobody has walked it, and no part of it is a path on the ground: it is the line along which the public record establishes a right to be. Where a leg names a way, that is what a managing authority has mapped down the same ground — it says nothing more about your right to be there, which the parcel already settled.
Following it on the ground Every step ends at something you can check
The way passes this place B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record
Forestry Road passes 36 m from the recorded point. There is 2 m of climb or drop between the two, read at a 1.0 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. The walk below runs along the surveyed way and ends on it. Leaving it to close the rest of the gap is not something any record here describes, and this page does not suggest it.
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Follow Forestry Road for 161 m, setting off NE (40°), to the junction with Forestry Road.
Back: 220° along Forestry Road, 161 m from the start.
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Follow Forestry Road for 205 m, setting off NE (35°), to the junction with Forestry Road.
Back: 215° along Forestry Road, 365 m from the start.
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Follow Forestry Road for 168 m, setting off NNW (335°), to the junction with Kuralboo Road.
Back: 155° along Forestry Road, 533 m from the start.
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Follow Forestry Road for 135 m, setting off NNW (332°), to the junction with Gwongorella Parade.
Back: 152° along Forestry Road, 668 m from the start.
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Follow Forestry Road for 32 m, setting off W (280°), to arrive.
Back: 100° along Forestry Road, 700 m from the start.
700 m in total, along the way the managing authority publishes. Every step above ends at something the records let you check on the ground. Bearings are true, not magnetic: they match a phone compass with no conversion. In this part of Queensland a magnetic bezel reads about 11° east of them, so an analogue compass needs that taken off before you set it.
What each step ends at, and why B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record
- junction
- A junction with another published way. Unmissable on the ground, and the place a wrong turn happens.
- destination
- The place itself, which is always where the last step ends.
A cadastral parcel boundary is never one of them. It is invisible on the ground, so a step that ended at one could never be checked — however convenient it looks in the data.
How much climbing Read off the published contour layer
- Total climb
- 3.0 m
- Total descent
- 11.0 m
- Steepest sustained
- 9.8% over 51.0 m
- Contour interval
- 1.0 m
Every height the contours record along this route
| Distance along | Height |
|---|---|
| 44.7 m | 597.0 m |
| 132.0 m | 597.0 m |
| 178.0 m | 596.0 m |
| 186.6 m | 596.0 m |
| 229.8 m | 596.0 m |
| 265.5 m | 595.0 m |
| 297.5 m | 595.0 m |
| 336.5 m | 596.0 m |
| 379.0 m | 597.0 m |
| 396.1 m | 598.0 m |
| 435.1 m | 598.0 m |
| 524.9 m | 597.0 m |
| 534.6 m | 597.0 m |
| 535.6 m | 597.0 m |
| 608.3 m | 596.0 m |
| 621.2 m | 595.0 m |
| 632.0 m | 594.0 m |
| 642.6 m | 593.0 m |
| 650.9 m | 592.0 m |
| 659.3 m | 591.0 m |
| 669.8 m | 590.0 m |
| 686.2 m | 589.0 m |
The profile is the height the contour layer already records, read along the same line the legs above describe. It is not a survey of a path: nothing here says the ground between two contours is even, and a layer of 1.0 m contours cannot evidence a step smaller than the gap between them.
The line on the ground
Map
Route map: 2 legs from Springbrook Road, 700.4 m in total.
What the colours mean
- Freehold or leasehold — no public access
- National park / protected estate — public land
- Road reserve
- Watercourse
- Track recorded by the managing authority
- Contour, every 10 m of height — nothing is implied about the ground between two of them
- Tenure unresolved — treated as no access
- Where your device says you are, shown only if you press the locate button — read as a rough fix, not a position, and never sent anywhere
- A place with a published approach — the pin is a link to it
- A place with none — every one is listed under the map with its tier in words
- The walk — the line the legs below describe, not a surveyed path
- The parcels it crosses — the evidence the walk is lawful
- Watercourse crossing — no structure, off in high flow
Names on the map come from the same official records as the rest of the page — road and track names from the cadastre and the access layer, watercourses and estates from their own layers. A feature the record does not name is left unlabelled rather than guessed at.
Sources, licences and dataset versions are listed in the footer of this page.
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.
What this verdict rests on Grades compose to the weakest link
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The destination sits on Springbrook National Park B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record
Parcel 5AP19371, recorded tenure "National Park". Being at the destination and reaching it are separate questions, and this page answers only the second.
Cadastre and protected-area estate layers Attribution licensed; see the footer
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Leg 1: Forestry Road carries a right of passage B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record
365.2 m at 36.7°. A track recorded by the managing authority in its published access layer, at the vetting status that layer states.
Leg reference Forestry Road Grade B
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Leg 2: Kuralboo Road carries a right of passage B — provenance grade B: Official spatial record
335.2 m at 327.9°. A track recorded by the managing authority in its published access layer, at the vetting status that layer states.
Leg reference Kuralboo Road Grade B
If something goes wrong
Emergency reference — read this to 000
- Location
- Rankins Falls, Springbrook National Park
- Lot on plan
- 5AP19371
- Coordinates
- -28.18750, 153.26694 (WGS84 / GDA2020)
- Feature
- waterfall
What this page will never do
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No user pins
Every fact here traces to a government layer or a statute and carries a grade, A to C. Community names are quarantined at grade D and labelled as such. Nothing on this page was dropped on a map by a stranger.
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No invented lawfulness
Where tenure cannot be confirmed from the public record, the page says so instead of endorsing the route or quietly hiding it. Where no lawful corridor exists at all, none is published — the refusal is the answer.
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No safety pretence
A tier is a tenure verdict, not a difficulty or safety rating. Unmanaged terrain, cliffs and flash flooding are not in the cadastre. The engine reads land records, not the weather.
On-ground signage and temporary closures override this page. Always.