In 1909, James Hardy corresponded with the Undersecretary of the Department of Public Instruction, David Ewart, concerning the possibility of a school being established at Springbrook.

The following year the Department of Public Lands received a petition to reserve an area for a school and dip, part of portion 91 held by John Boyd as Agricultural Farm 5256, Brisbane District.

In March Inspector John Shirley inspected the area and recommended establishment of a school on 15 acres to be surrendered to the Lands Department by W. Boyd.

Miss Elisabeth Josephine McMahon was the first teacher and fifteen children were enrolled when the Springbrook State School opened on the 26 April 1911.

[1] In the following year an extremely large New England Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus andrewsii), which grew beside the school, was cut down and burnt.

In 1914, following an application to John George Appel, the Home Secretary, who lived at Beechmont and understood the weather, a stove was installed in the school.

At some stage in the early years George Morton and Colin Sprenger laid an ant bed tennis court at the site of the current carpark.

A petition with 29 signatures was received protesting this removal and in May 1934 Inspector Bevington recommended that the school be opened on a trial for three months to see if attendance would improve.

[1] In 1961, local residents celebrated the 50th anniversary of the school by constructing a memorial cairn at Hardy's Lookout on Springbrook-Mudgeeraba Road.

School Reserve 454, comprising approximately three hectares, and its buildings was transferred to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).

The window paint was stripped, a new front verandah and access ramp were built and cork flooring, a pot-belly stove and information displays were installed.

The site includes a number of structures: the Information Centre, playshed, toilet block, carpark, stump, water trough, and tanks.

It is a low-set timber-framed, weatherboard-clad building with a gabled roof clad in corrugated iron, and numerous additions and alterations.

This bank of windows consists of a central casement pair (original) and a slightly taller group of two hoppers, topped by louvres.

The eastern room is a newer addition with concrete stumps, a separate roof structure, a flat ceiling and a narrow board floor.

It is lined with fibro boards, with no cover strips and there is one set of hopper windows on the north and a sink on the eastern wall.

It consists of timber railings and vertical balustrades except on the western end where it is enclosed in weatherboards to replicate the port rack area of the original verandah.

[1] The playshed (1954) is a rectangular unlined and timber structure with a concrete floor, constructed to a standard Queensland Works Department plan.

[1] The toilet block is a semi-enclosed structure built from rock and timber with a metal roof, of National Parks vintage.

[1] The former Springbrook State School (QPWS Information Centre) was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 August 2003 having satisfied the following criteria.

The former Springbrook State School, constructed in 1911, is significant as evidence of the late settlement of the difficult to access mountain plateaux of the Gold Coast hinterland.

It is an attractive, although somewhat modified, version of typical small, early 20th century school designed by the Queensland Works Department.

The 1954 playshed is important in illustrating the principal characteristics of its type, a standard design also supplied by the Queensland Works Department.