The Glasshouse Mountains: The Volcanic Plugs That Guard the Southern Gateway

The Glasshouse Mountains, the remnant volcanic cores that rise abruptly from the Sunshine Coast hinterland's flat agricultural plain approximately 50 kilometres south of Noosa, provide the most visually distinctive landscape element of the southern Sunshine Coast and one of the most recognisable natural landmarks in Queensland. The mountains' sharp, steep profiles, the result of the erosion that has removed the softer volcanic material surrounding the more resistant central plugs over millions of years, create the dramatic silhouette visible from the Bruce Highway and from the coastal plain that James Cook first observed and named on his 1770 voyage along the Queensland coast.

The national park that protects the mountains and their immediate surroundings provides the bushwalking, rock climbing, and mountain biking opportunities that the volcanic rock faces and the surrounding scrub and forest create. The scrambles to the summits of the accessible mountains, including Mount Beerwah and Mount Tibrogargan, provide challenging but non-technical ascents through the eucalypt forest to the exposed summit rock where the views across the Sunshine Coast to the ocean and south to the Glass House Mountains plain provide the reward that the effort of the ascent justifies.

The Jinibara people, the traditional custodians of the Glasshouse Mountains country, maintain the spiritual and cultural connection to the mountains that the Dreaming stories of the region encode in the landscape. The mountains' names in the Jinibara language, including Tibrogargan, Beerwah, and Coonowrin, reflect the cultural geography that predates European nomenclature and that the national park management acknowledges in its interpretive material about the landscape's human history.

The fruit farms and the tourism businesses of the Glasshouse Mountains area, including the strawberry farms, the avocado orchards, and the accommodation that serves the visitors who come to walk the mountains or to stay in the hinterland on their way to or from the Sunshine Coast, create the mixed rural and tourism economy that the mountains' setting supports. The farm gate sales and pick-your-own operations that the Glasshouse Mountains area sustains provide the direct producer-consumer connection that food tourism depends on.

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