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Most real estate agents told us we were crazy when we looked for a property within our budget which was less than two hours’ drive from Brisbane, with rainforest and a permanent creek, adjacent to a National Park or similar protected area and at least 50 acres. However, we decided to keep trying. |
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| After some intensive searching, we found it: 87 acres at the foot of Mt Chinghee near the Queensland-NSW border, about a third covered in fairly mature rainforest regrowth, adjacent to Mt Chinghee NP (covered in seasonally-dry rainforest) and with views to Border Ranges NP and Lamington NP, one kilometre of Running Creek (which has never stopped running in even the worst of droughts), and just a 90 minute drive to either Brisbane or the Gold Coast. Steep slopes that were covered largely in weeds and land-slips are now on their way back to being rainforest. | |||
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Much of the rest of the property is grassy (mostly the native kangaroo grass Themeda australis with scattered forest red gum (also called Queensland blue gum) Eucalyptus tereticornis. The riparian section along the river is dominated by sheoaks and melaleucas, with many bottlebrush and a few rainforest species such as figs and lillypillies. The massive flood of January 2008 took out more than 90% of these trees, but there are now many young ones coming up. |  |
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Wildlife
on the
property includes platypus, koala, red-necked wallaby,
brushtail possum, squirrel glider, northern brown bandicoot,
brushtailed phascogale, yellow-footed antechinus, common dunnart,
water-rat and other native rats, fruitbats, microbats, regent
bowerbird, lewin’s honeyeater, eastern whipbird, sulphur-crested
cockatoo, azure kingfisher, black-breasted button-quail, tawny
frogmouth, little pied cormorant and many other birds, lace monitor
(goannas), bearded dragon, eastern water dragon, eastern water skink,
major skink, carpet python, short-necked turtle and other reptiles,
green tree frog, stony creek frogs, broad-palmed rocket frogs, ornate
burrowing frogs and other frogs, eels, catfish and other fish plus many
butterflies and other invertebrates. These creatures are all truly
wild, so we cannot guarantee seeing any particular species, but there
is always something to see. We began running ecotours in May 1997, with just one product, the 3-day wildlife tour, in a 5-seater vehicle, advertised by photocopied fliers to backpacker hostels. Soon after, we purchased an 8-seater minibus, started our first website, and acheived eco-accreditation for our tour. Travellers who could not stay in Queensland long enough for our 3-day tour started asking about day-tour possibilities, so we added three of these (bird-watching, bush-walking and Coochiemudlo Island) and soon had advanced eco-accreditation for all four tours. We acheived our first tourism award in 2002 and have won other awards since then. All our tours have also since acheved advanced eco-accreditation. |
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When a beautiful new Bed-and-Breakfast, Cougal Park, opened much closer to our house than the accommodation we had been using, we switched to this, as it was closer to home, closer to the rainforests, and gave us the opportunity to add coastal habitats (sandy beaches, rocky headlands, mangroves) to the tour. The whole family keeps the first aid training up to date, Ronda has completed a food safety course and attends updates. Darren and Ronda have both completed an AussieHost course, and are the main guides on our tours.. Ronda has a PhD in zoology and had previously been working as a university lecturer, a research ecologist and an environmental consultant (as well as various nature interpretation roles). She is continuing research on the property and elsewhere, especially on native seed dispersal by fruit-eating animals, and continues to conduct fauna surveys and other consultancies for local government, conservation groups and others. The Wildlife Information Centre and nature trails on the property conitinue to be developed and are avaiable for self-drives and campers to visit by prior arrnagement. |
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