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

Purling Brook Falls

Track to a place to see it from a published way, with steps to follow

Gazetted name Difficulty: Class 4 -28.18978, 153.27090 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.

Purling Brook Falls sits on Purling Brook. The surveyed centreline of that watercourse runs 14.6 m from the recorded point, which is the whole evidence for saying it is this one. Official spatial — evidence class

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 felsic volcanic rock, mapped as Binna Burra Rhyolite (Tlr) , oligocene - miocene in age. The survey describes it as: Rhyolitic tuffs and lavas Official spatial — evidence class

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

100% — Heath and rock pavement with scattered shrubs or open woodland on Cainozoic igneous hills and mountains 12.8.19 · Of 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 2.8 m along the watercourse — the test the rule applies, not the height of the fall. Its steepest single stretch drops 5.0 m over 0.4 m of ground — 12.8 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	"Purling Brook 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	Purling Brook, whose surveyed centreline runs 14.6 m away.	Official spatial — evidence class
Feature	Found by the terrain rule falls-rule/1, which fired because the bed loses 15.0 m within 2.8 m — the threshold it tests, not the height of the fall. Steepest stretch measured: 5.0 m over 0.4 m. A rule fired — nobody surveyed it.	Statutory inference — evidence class

Where it is

Map — covers Gold Coast

Map of Purling Brook Falls and the starts of the 7 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 reaches somewhere to see it from Official spatial — evidence class

Purling Brook Falls Circuit - Bitumen (Great Walk) passes 4 m from the recorded point. There is 35 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 register signs this way for this place, and it comes within reach of it and stops above or below it — so it is where the walk is meant to end, and what it ends at is a view rather than the feature itself. No approach to it is published from here, though: that is a separate question about who may lawfully cross the ground in between, and the approaches below are where it is answered.

Approaches — one page each 7 published of 48 computed

48 ways in were computed and 7 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.