Spicers Gap Road Conservation Park is a part of the Main Range National Park

Main Range National Park

Main Range is a mountain range and a national park in Queensland , 85 km southwest of Brisbane. It is part of the World Heritage Site Gondwana Rainforests of Australia . It protects the western part of a semicircle of mountains in South East Queensland known as the Scenic Rim...

 in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Spicers Gap Road is the original route between the Darling Downs and Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

. It was used by Cobb and Co

Cobb and Co

Cobb and Co is the name of a transportation company in Australia. It was prominent in the late 19th century when it operated stagecoaches to many areas in the outback and at one point in several other countries, as well....

 Coaches and was later replaced by the Cunninghams Gap Road named after explorer Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham was a Scottish poet and author.He was born at Keir, near Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire, and first worked as a stonemason's apprentice. His father was a neighbour of Robert Burns at Ellisland, and Allan with his brother James visited James Hogg, the "Ettrick shepherd", who became a...

 who established the route. The road was constructed by convict

Convict

A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...

s during the 19th century.

Until the late 1990s, Spicers Gap Road was a popular diversion from the Cunningham Highway

Cunningham Highway

The Cunningham Highway is a National Highway in Queensland, Australia. It is named after the explorer and botanist Allan Cunningham who followed a route close to where the modern day highway runs.-Route:...

 for adventurous off-roaders. It was at times a challenging and rough route, usable only by 4WDs and made more difficult by the muddy clay soil that is common to the region. As a result of this increasing popularity, and the carelessness of some users, 1.6 kilometers of the road was closed to vehicles by Queensland National Parks and gazetted as a Conservation Park

Conservation park

Conservation park is a type of specially protected status for land held by the Crown for conservation purposes.In New Zealand this land is administered by the Department of Conservation and was set up under the Conservation Act 1987. As of 31 March 2005, New Zealand's Conservation parks consisted...

. This is the section at the crest of the gap and was done in order to preserve some of the road's unique 19th century engineering features.