The Hughenden area is most known for the striking beauty of Porcupine Gorge 70km to the north.
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However just 15km to the south of town lies another area of outstanding beauty to capture tourist attention.
The sandstone tabletop Mount Walker sits 478m above sea level and is owned by two private families though a bitumen road gives public access to the summit.
Here there are six lookouts which give you access to spectacular 360 degree views over the surrounding district.
The site got its name from Frederick Walker, who had a dark side to his history as the first commandant of the Queensland Native Police, but who was also an outstanding bushman.
In 1861 he led a search party from Rockhampton to the Gulf to look for the missing party of Burke and Wills.
Walker passed through the area that would become Hughenden and he blazed a tree with the camp number "23" that can still be seen at the Hughenden Showgrounds.
A year later William Landsborough came through also looking for signs of Burke and Wills and marked Walker's blazed tree.
He named the nearby mountain in the honour of his "brother explorer".
Reay Lookout looks south from Mt Walker to Reay station 35km away with its open sparse Mitchell Downs country.
At the top of Mt Walker, Landsborough wrote "from its summit stretching across part of the horizon, there was nothing to be seen but plains."
Jardine Lookout looks north-east to the Jardine Valley between Hughenden and Prairie. In 1864 brothers Frank and Alexander Jardine drove cattle from Rockhampton to the Cape. Younger brother Alexander veered off in Landsborough's footsteps to find an easier route for cattle away from the coast, discovering the valley and creek named in his honour.
The Etna Lookout looks south-west to Mt Etna station towards black soil country on the Winton Road.
The heavy contracting clay in this country does not allow for much tree growth but is perfect for Mitchell Downs grass and supports reptiles, birds and small marsupials. When the rain comes the waterlogged cracks in the soil provide an ideal habitat for burrowing frogs.
As the name suggest Sunset Lookout is the ideal place for the late evening light often blazing orange and red in summer. In winter the night skies colour to a softer purple-pink haze.
Ironbark Lookout shows the distinctive ironbark trees while the Hughenden Lookout looks out over the town itself.
In 1864 first white settler Ernest Henry gave it its name from his mother's home of Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire.
He wrote:
"Descending from the tablelands we saw before us a lovely valley of undulating downs, studded here and there with groups and belts of graceful Myall trees whose shadows were thrown over the green herbage by the rising sun. Rich pastures of rolling plains covered with Flinders and Mitchell grasses, trackless and undisturbed by a single hoof, lay before us."
When the nearby land was surveyed for a new township in 1877, it took the name of Hughenden from Henry's property.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
