Rocky Creek Dam sits in a landscape that looks deceptively straightforward on maps. The water body itself is modest – a working dam that holds back a creek system through what amounts to a narrow valley. The forest around it…
The rainforest around Ballina sits in a peculiar pocket of the northern NSW coast. It’s not the dense, impenetrable jungle you might imagine from travel blogs, and it’s not manicured parkland either. What you get is subtropical regrowth forest mixed…
After spending years moving between rainforest reserves of varying sizes across Central America and Southeast Asia, I’ve noticed something that doesn’t always make it into conservation literature: the smallest protected areas often punch well above their weight ecologically. A 500-hectare…
Whian Whian State Forest sits in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast and Byron Bay, and it’s one of those places that looks deceptively straightforward on a map. The trails wind through subtropical rainforest, and the elevation changes are moderate…
Rose-crowned fruit-doves are genuinely difficult to see, even when you know they’re there. I’ve spent considerable time in Australian rainforests tracking these birds, and the experience teaches you quickly that their reputation for being elusive is earned. They’re small, they…
The Big Scrub rainforest once covered roughly 240,000 hectares across northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. Today, less than 1,200 hectares remain – roughly 0.5 percent of what existed before European settlement. Walking through what survives now, you can…
Victoria Park’s forest sits in that middle ground where it’s neither remote wilderness nor manicured park. After spending considerable time moving through these trails, I’ve found the experience depends heavily on what you’re actually looking for and when you choose…
Big Scrub rainforest in northern New South Wales exists as a fragmented landscape now, nothing like the continuous canopy that once stretched across the region. What remains is scattered across several reserves and private properties, each with its own character…
The Big Scrub, once a continuous subtropical rainforest stretching across northern New South Wales, now exists as scattered fragments. What remains tells a particular story about land use, time, and what happens when you try to move through a landscape…