Allan Cunningham Monument is a heritage-listed monument on the Cunningham Highway, Cunningham's Gap, near the boundary of Tregony in the Southern Downs Region and Tarome in Scenic Rim Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Dornbusch & Connolly and built in 1927. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 29 April 2022.
History The Allan Cunningham Monument, located north-east of Warwick, was constructed in 1927 to commemorate the centenary of the explorer Allan Cunningham's achievements in traversing the Great Dividing Range and documenting a pass through the mountains in 1828. Cunningham's Gap, as it became known, had long been important to the traditional owners, the Yuggera Ugarapul people, of the Fassifern Valley, and would become the main connecting link between the Darling Downs in the west to south-east Queensland and its coast in the east. The monument's construction coincided with the opening of a road through the pass, and it quickly became a tourist attraction, standing amidst the rainforest of the Main Range National Park.
The valley between Mount Mitchell and Mount Cordeaux, today known as Cunningham's Gap, had long provided a pathway for Indigenous people from the Darling Downs in the west and the Fassifern Valley in the east below. A Dreamtime story tells of the Yuggera Ugarapul people of the Fassifern Valley rounding up all the kangaroos and holding them in a fenced enclosure so no other clan could catch them. However, an old woman released the captured animals and, as they bounded west across the range, they tore the gap between the two mountains.Maurice French, Conflict on the Condamine: Aborigines and the European Invasion, University of Southern Queensland Press, 1989, p.15J G Steele, Aboriginal Pathways: In Southeast Queensland and the Richmond River, University of Queensland Press, 1984, p.146David Parsons, Wadingh Wadingh: A History of Aboriginal People in the Warwick Area and Their Land, University of Southern Queensland, 2003, p.69.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in Queensland, the elevated and verdant grass plains of the southern Darling Downs, below what was to become known as Cunningham's Gap, were the traditional lands of the Githabal people, who were known for their careful and deliberate use of fire for the management and maintenance of the grasslands of the Darling Downs (often termed fire-stick farming). The traditional method they used ensured the grasses and other plant species would regenerate and supply a reliable food source for the Githabal people as well as for game animals such as kangaroo and wallabies.David Parsons, Wadingh Wadingh: A History of Aboriginal People in the Warwick Area and Their Land, p.69
Allan Cunningham (1791–1839) was an experienced, British explorer and botanist in Australia from 1817, joining both terrestrial and nautical expeditions with other explorers, such as John Oxley and Phillip Parker King, before leading his own expeditions through the country north of Bathurst and west of the Blue Mountains. He made important contributions to both Australian exploration and to botany, and was highly respected by his contemporaries. He died in 1839 and five years later an obelisk memorial was dedicated to him in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, reflecting this esteem. Later, in 1901, his remains were moved from a Sydney cemetery and interred within this obelisk.
In April 1827, after gaining the support of General Ralph Darling, the new governor of New South Wales, Cunningham led a team of six men and eleven horses north. By early June 1827, they had reached the south-eastern edge of what became known as the Darling Downs and were immediately impressed by the lush plains that stretched far to the north, bounded by forested mountains to the east. Cunningham reported to the governor that:Allan Cunningham, Brief Views of the Progress of the Interior Discovery in New South Wales, 1832, State Library of New South Wales, p.112."From these central grounds, rise downs of a rich, black, and dry soil, and very ample surface; as they furnish an abundance of grass, and are conveniently watered, yet perfectly beyond the reach of those floods ... they constitute a valuable and sound sheep pasture".The British exploration party did not recognise that the grassy plains were the result of the Githabal people's careful management of the Southern Downs country over generations.Allan Cunningham, 'Cunningham's Report to General Darling, 18 August 1828', in J G Steele, The Explorers of the Moreton Bay District, 1770-1830, University of Queensland Press, 1972, p.283.
On this journey, Cunningham named the Condamine River, one of the major waterways on the Darling Downs. He also identified a possible pass over the dividing range to the coast, which would later be known as Spicer's Gap. The party returned to Sydney in mid-June 1827. Just over one year later, in August 1828, Cunningham headed another expedition, with two bullocks, two servants and a driver, from Ipswich (then known as Limestone) and followed the Bremer River, a tributary of the Brisbane River, south-west. The expedition's main purpose was to locate the pass that they found the previous year, but from the east side of the Great Dividing Range.Erwin Feeken, The Discovery and Exploration of Australia, Thomas Nelson Australia Ltd., Melbourne 1970, p.89-90
After travelling for several days, the expedition arrived at the foot of the mountain range where they camped. Cunningham noted the presence of aboriginal people's camps in the distance:Cunningham, 'Cunningham's Report to General Darling, 18 August 1828', p.284."the smoke of natives" fires was seen curling above the trees a little to the eastward of us, but these people kept themselves very quiet, not a voice heard, or a person seen"Cunningham and his men reached what they believed was the gap they identified the previous year from the west (Spicer's Gap), but was, in fact, the pass known today as Cunningham's Gap. On 25 August 1828, Cunningham climbed to the summit of the pass and beheld the Darling Downs below to the west; he later wrote:Allan Cunningham, 'Cunningham's Report to General Darling', in Ida Lee, Early Explorers in Australia: From the Log Books and Journals, London, 1925, p.605, Accessed February 2022."Without the smallest difficulty, and to my utmost surprise, we found ourselves in the highest part of the Pass, having fully ascertained the extent of the difficult part, from the entrance into the wood, to this point not to exceed 400 yards. We now pushed our way westerly through this extraordinary defile, and, in less than half a mile of level surface, clothed with thick bush of plants common to the Brisbane River, reached the opposite side of the main range, where I observed the waters fell westerly to Millar's Valley beneath us."In an 1832 issue of the Royal Geographical Society's journal article he wrote, "should the Gap, which had been discovered in the main dividing range ... admit of a passage through that chain of mountains, the readiest point of access to the very desirable country on their western side would be from the shores of Moreton Bay and Brisbane River".Allan Cunningham, Brief Views of the Progress of the Interior Discovery in New South Wales, 1832, State Library of New South Wales, p.116. Having achieved their goal to find the pass, the expedition returned to Limestone.
Twelve years later, grazier Patrick Leslie, with a large party, set out from Penrith, New South Wales to explore the Darling Downs. In 1840, he pioneered the first European pastoral runs on the Downs, "Toolburra" and "Canning Downs", and established the important wool industry in the region. Other graziers (often called squatters) soon followed, with further pastoral runs dividing and changing the traditional grass plains of the Githabal people. Agriculture was also introduced in this era when closer settlement began. Increasingly, the traditional lifestyle of the Githabal people, as well as the other Indigenous groups throughout the Darling Downs, was disrupted and people were soon dispossessed, often violently, from their ancestral land.French, Conflict on the Condamine: Aborigines and the European Invasion, pp.94-100.
The town of Warwick, which grew to become the business centre for the southern Darling Downs, was surveyed by James Burnett in 1849, with the first sale of Crown land occurring in July 1850. Warwick was declared a municipality in 1861 and was subsequently transformed from a squatters' town into the principal urban centre of this prosperous pastoral and agricultural district.
From the 1840s, Darling Downs pastoralists were faced with an expensive trip to Maitland to carry wool to port and return with supplies to the stations. A direct route to the Moreton Bay settlement (later to be named Brisbane) was needed. In 1840, Leslie and fellow pastoralist, Arthur Hodgson obtained permits from Governor Sir George Gipps to have supplies sent to Brisbane; however, they still had problems with getting their stores from Brisbane over the Great Dividing Range to the Darling Downs. Several passes across the range to the Darling Downs had been cut from the 1840s:
Gorman's Gap was a short-lived crossing north of Toowoomba in the 1840s a dray route called Spicers Gap Road over Spicer's Gap was cut in the late 1840s Toowoomba's Toll Bar Road provided a dray route up the range to Toowoomba from the 1850s
A rough road over Cunningham's Gap, east to the Fassifern Valley below had also been made from the 1840s for drays carrying wool to Ipswich. To cater for travelling dray teams an inn, known as Jubb's Woolpack Inn, was established in the early 1850s a few miles from the western ascent in Maryvale. However, by the mid-1850s, this road was rarely used due to the steepness of the incline on the eastern side of the pass.Maurice French, Travellers in a Landscape: Visitors' Impressions of the Darling Downs, 1827-1954, University of Southern Queensland Press, Toowoomba, 1994, pp. 90, 110-112, 117Queensland Family History Society, "William Jubb, Woolpack Inn, Maryvale", Queensland Hotels and Publicans Index (1843-1900), 1996. In 1854, Herbert Marshall wrote an account of his visit to the Darling Downs, over which they travelled through the Spicer's Gap road:French, Travellers in a Landscape: Visitors' Impressions of the Darling Downs, 1827-1954, p.112."The old road used to go over a place called Cunningham's gap which was so bad that they had to lower the drays down with a rope, but now they have cut a new road south."
Consequently, Spicer's Gap became the preferred dray route over the range from Warwick until the early twentieth century, although it, too, proved to be a difficult one.