For at least 6000 years, Aboriginal people lived in and visited these mountains. The vanished Wangerriburras and Nerangballum tribes claimed home to the plateau territory. Roughly 900 years ago the indigenous population began to decline. Bushrangers Cave, which is located close to Mount Hobwee and is 60 m long, was once an aboriginal camp. This site shows Aboriginal occupation going back 10,000 years.
Captain Patrick Logan and Allan Cunningham were the first European explorers in the area. The timber cutters soon followed, including the Lahey family who owned one of Queensland's largest timber mills at the time. In 1863 a survey of the Queensland/New South Wales border was conducted. The task was carried out by Francis Edward Roberts and Isaiah Rowland, both surveyors, who had to define the border along the highest points in dense rainforest where there were very few clear lines of sight.
Robert Martin Collins campaigned heavily for the protection of the area from logging from the 1890s. Collins entered state parliament and saw a bill passed that preserved state forests and national parks but he died before the McPherson Range was protected. Later it was another local, Romeo Lahey who recognised the value of preserving the forests. He campaigned to make it one of the first protected areas in Queensland. The O�Reilly family established a guesthouse near the park in 1926, now named O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat, and founding members of the National Parks Association of Queensland built Binna Burra Lodge next to the park in the 1930s. Lamington National park was established in 1915. The park was named after Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1902.
In 1937, Bernard O'Reilly became a hero when he rescued the survivors from a crashed Stinson plane from the remote Lamington wilderness. In typical Australian bushman fashion he embarked on his rescue mission taking only onions to eat. Only a small portion of the original wreck remains
