Bald Rock National Park is a national park in northern New South Wales, Australia, just north of Tenterfield on the Queensland border. On the other side of the border the national park continues as the Girraween National Park.
The park is named after its most prominent feature, Bald Rock, which is a large granite outcrop rising about 200 metres above the surrounding landscape. Measuring about 750 metres long and 500 metres wide this is the largest granite monolith in Australia. Access to the rock is provided by a sealed road into the park and walking tracks to the summit. Two tracks are marked, a steep one up the exposed face, or an easier gradient through bushland around the back. The summit offers panoramic views of the surrounding bushland, but vegetation on top prevents a full 360° view.
The park is in the New England granite belt, where about 220 million years ago an episode of granite magmatism resulted in the intrusion of the Stanthorpe Adamellite into the surrounding metamorphic and sedimentary rock. Subsequent uplift and erosion of the New England Fold Belt has seen the majority of the surrounding sediments and metamorphic rocks eroded away, with the Stanthorpe Adamellite remaining due to its resistance to weathering.
This regolith has created a landscape with many exposed inselbergs of granite rocks, some balancing on top of each other, or forming natural arches. The walking track going up the back of Bald Rock leads through such an arch.
Just off the road beside the park is Thunderbolts Hideout, a set of caves and overhanging granite rocks. It was thought to have been used by bushranger Captain Thunderbolt.
Famous quotes containing the words bald, rock, national and/or park:
“Under an old oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Nobody dast blame this man.... For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Mrs. Mirvan says we are not to walk in [St. James’s] Park again next Sunday ... because there is better company in Kensington Gardens; but really, if you had seen how every body was dressed, you would not think that possible.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)