Cunninghams Gap - QLD

On 25 August 1828 Allan Cunningham was the first European to find and explore Cunningham's Gap. He named the guardian peaks of the Gap as Mount Mitchell (after Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General) and Mount Cordeaux (after William Cordeaux, Mitchell's assistant). Cunningham's discovery seemed to solve the problem of finding a shorter route between Moreton Bay Colony and the newly discovered Darling Downs. However, the route proposed by Cunningham proved too steep to negotiate easily, with drays and their contents having to be lowered by ropes over a cliff line. An alternative route was found in 1847, when stockman Henry Alphen was credited with discovering an easier route through a gap, 7km to the south. It is thought that Aboriginal people used this gap in the range as a trade route between the east and west. Cunningham had noted the gap 20 years earlier but had not suggested its use for transport. Alan Cunningham named Spicer's Gap and peak after Peter Spicer, Superintendent of convicts, because he identified the peak while looking for escaped convicts from the Moreton Bay penal settlement. Spicer's Gap became the first safe and trafficable route between the port at Moreton Bay and the Darling Downs. Bullock teams would pull drays laden with wool to port and return with supplies for the Darling Downs settlers. Early road construction techniques can be seen along the old road in Spicer's Gap Conservation Park. An inn used by travellers flourished for a short time opposite the present Spicer's Gap camping area. It took from the late 1850s to the mid 1860s to build a major road through Spicer's Gap. By 1871, use of the road declined as the railway then linked Warwick to Moreton Bay via Toowoomba. A more direct route across the range was constructed at Cunningham's Gap and was opened in 1927 and later sealed in the 1940s. Today, it is a major interstate highway with more than million vehicles passing through each year.