Scenic Rim Official spatial — evidence class · Scenic Rim · QLD
Denham Falls
No lawful route approaches were tested; none carried a right of passage
Access verdict · Unconfirmed · weakest evidence in the chain: official spatial record
No lawful approach to this place could be established from the public record.
Every entry point tested ends at land the public has no established right to cross. This page publishes the refusal and the reason, and no route line of any kind.
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 Denham 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 outside every protected-area estate in the snapshot.
The point falls outside every World Heritage property the state maps.
The rock at the surface is basalt, mapped as
Beechmont Basalt (Tlb) , oligocene - miocene in age. The survey
describes it as: Olivine basalt
Official spatial — evidence class
The remnant vegetation mapping records no ecosystem over this point. That covers remnant vegetation only, so it is what the register says about ground that has been cleared, or is water, sand or rock — not a statement that nothing grows here.
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 14.4 m along the watercourse — the test the rule applies, not the height of the fall. Its steepest single stretch drops 5.0 m over 3.8 m of ground — 1.3 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
| Claim | What the record says | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Name | "Denham Falls" is a community record only — absent from the gazetteer and from the state feature layer. | Community — evidence class |
| Tenure | Resolved to Other Crown land, recorded as "Reserve". | Official spatial — evidence class |
| Parcel | 165W311851 | Official spatial — evidence class |
| Council area | This place sits inside Scenic Rim, tested against the boundary that council area publishes. | Official spatial — evidence class |
| Estate | This point falls outside every protected-area estate polygon in the snapshot. | — |
| 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 14.4 m — the threshold it tests, not the height of the fall. Steepest stretch measured: 5.0 m over 3.8 m. A rule fired — nobody surveyed it. | Statutory inference — evidence class |
Officially this place exists only as an unnamed feature on public land. The name is a community record; everything else on this page is computed from gazetted, official spatial or statutory-inference sources, and the two are never mixed.
Where it is
Map — covers Scenic Rim
Map of Denham Falls and the starts of the 2 published approaches to it, over the parcels, corridors, estate and tracks around them.
Panning stops just outside Scenic Rim, 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.
What the colours mean
- Land — the council area the region is published under
- Water beyond the council boundary
- 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 verdict in words
- Where a published approach starts — each one has a page of its own below
- 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 for everything this map draws.
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 No published way within range
No vetted way the managing authority publishes comes within range of this point. That is a fact about the access record, not about the ground: an unmapped pad may well exist, and this site will not invent one on the strength of that.
Approaches — one page each 2 published of 30 computed
30 ways in were computed and 2 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.
Denham Falls from formed paved track off Beechmont Road
Official spatial · Unconfirmed — evidence class denham-falls--from-formed-paved-track-off-beechmont-road- Verdict
- Unconfirmed
- One way
- not published
- Caveats
- none
No lawful chain was established from this entry. The route page states why, and publishes no legs.
Denham Falls from Road
Official spatial · No lawful route — evidence class denham-falls--from-road- Verdict
- No lawful route
- One way
- not published
- Caveats
- none
No lawful chain was established from this entry. The route page states why, and publishes no legs.
Before you go Published alerts as at the snapshot date
The authority that manages this area publishes its alerts as data, and it published none for here in the snapshot this page was built from. That is not the same as "open" — a snapshot is a moment, and conditions move faster than one.
The authority that manages this area publishes its alerts as data, and it published none for here when this page last read the feed. That is not the same as "open" — a feed is a moment, and conditions move faster than one.
On Country
Registered Aboriginal cultural heritage party: Danggan Balun (Five Rivers) People — this point falls inside the registered party boundary. Official spatial — evidence class
A cultural heritage party boundary and a native title claim are different legal things. This page never conflates them, and it publishes neither as a permission.
All land and waters in Queensland carry a duty of care under s.23 of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) — including here. Cultural heritage site locations are restricted by law (ss.38–46), deliberately, for site protection. This site holds party boundaries only and will never republish site locations. Check the public register and, where in doubt, seek guidance from the Aboriginal party for the area.
Searching a register does not of itself satisfy the duty of care.
Rules here — derived from tenure no estate designation resolved
Conduct rules follow from tenure and the legislation that governs it. Nothing specific is inferred here, which means you should read the signs, not that no rules apply.
Statutes relied on: Nature Conservation Act 1992 (Qld) and its regulations for protected estate; Water Act 2000 (Qld) s.21 for watercourse beds; Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) ss.23 and 38–46 for the duty of care and for why site locations are never republished here.
If something goes wrong
Emergency reference — read this to 000
- Location
- Denham Falls (community name — not in any government register)
- Lot on plan
- 165W311851
- Coordinates
- -28.11002, 153.19558 (WGS84 / GDA2020)
- Feature
- waterfall
What this place was read from
- Registered Aboriginal cultural heritage party boundaries (boundaries only) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-23
- Cadastral data Queensland (DCDB), incl. easement layer — © State of Queensland (Department of Resources) CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22
- Queensland LiDAR-derived contours (5 m) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22
- Queensland local government area boundaries — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-30
- QPWS access (walking tracks, roads, facilities) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-23
- Queensland detailed surface geology (1:100 000) — © State of Queensland (Geological Survey of Queensland) CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22