Kwiambal National Park

Pronounced Kigh-am-bal, Kwiambal National Park is a quiet achiever. Tucked away near the NSW-Queensland border, its isolation is also its attraction: come for the nature, stay for the privacy. There’s a good chance you’ll have a great deal of space to yourself, with day trippers travelling through the outback and grey nomads the most frequent visitors in the area.

Though the park has a history of tobacco farming, white cypress-pines and ironbarks are in ready supply, accompanying dramatic granite gorges and twisting waterways that thunder after heavy storms. The open plains are often covered with kangaroos – stick around for dusk and dawn and you might even see the resident emus.

Kwiambal offers multiple opportunities for swimming and fishing, with plentiful river species for the taking. The rivers themselves are a prime attraction too, offering plunge pools, beaches, and scenic waterfalls best seen from one of the several lookouts scattered around the park. Walking trails thread through cool forest and are scaled for many levels of fitness. Pull on the hiking boots and then reward your efforts with a barbecue at one of the several picnic spots, perfect for a weekend getaway.

Bring your tent or caravan, or enjoy some budget accommodation. Kwiambal offers a surprising variety of options – something for everyone, space enough for all.

Native vegetation

Rainforests

Patches of rainforest cling to sheltered areas, still surviving in the dry infertile country. They hold rare collections of plants and animals. About 90 per cent of Australia's dry rainforests have been cleared and Kwiambal National Park protects 15 per cent of all the dry rainforest left in NSW.

Dry rainforests have a dense tree canopy of dark, shiny leaves. You'll find them in the sheltered rocky areas of the park.

Grassy woodlands

The most common trees in the park's woodlands are from three groups of eucalypts: ironbark, box and gum. You can easily identify them by their bark:

* ironbark trees have hard, dark, flaky bark;

* box trees have pale, fibrous bark that powders easily when rubbed; and

* gum trees have multi-coloured smooth bark that's cool to touch.

Here are some of the different types of woodlands in the park:

Ironbark - cypress pine woodlands include various gum trees and a well-developed layer of shrubs. The shrubs supply the nest sites and food for a great variety of birds.

Box - ironbark woodlands Native shrubs and white box trees once covered vast areas of the north-west slopes. Now 75 per cent of this plant community has been cleared for farming. The many small and useful insect-eating birds of this plant community are disappearing at an alarming rate. To recover, they desperately need patches of uncleared woodland - 20 hectares or larger. They also need shrubby tree corridors, linking woodland patches together. Koalas are still seen in the woodland patches of Kwiambal National Park and other local reserves.

Riverine woodlands In healthy landscapes, native shrubs and river red gums line the rivers and creeks. These help stop erosion and can filter any phosphate-enriched water from farms and towns upstream. This helps keep river waters healthy and free of blue-green algae blooms.

Fish need these trees and shrubs. The Murray cod, Australia's biggest inland fish, still breeds in the park area. Snags, the tree branches that fall into local rivers, give fish - and their prey - the protection they need from birds and other fish. River snags may look messy, but inland fish depend on them. Studies show that over 80 per cent of Murray cod are found within a metre of river snags and wood piles.

Native animals

Animals are plentiful in Kwiambal National Park, including more than 140 bird species. You'll probably see plenty of honeyeaters, parrots and smaller insect-eating birds. It's harder to see the rare species such as regent honeyeaters and turquoise parrots that depend on these woodlands for their food and nests.

These wonderful woodlands support many small animals, especially where old or dead trees provide hollows for nests and shelter. In the last 200 years many of the region's animals have lost their habitat due to clearing. Now woodland birds are disappearing. Unless we can reverse this habitat loss on private lands, these animal populations will continue to fall. Then some animals will disappear permanently and those that can, will have to depend on scattered national parks for their long-term survival. Locally declining animals include the koala, gliders (feather tailed, sugar and squirrel) and many bats.

In the park, you will probably see common mammals like the grey kangaroos, wallaroos and red-necked wallabies, and with a torch at night you could see brush-tailed and ring-tailed possums.

The park's lizards, snakes and frogs are restricted to particular habitats and are rarely seen. The many delightful frogs of this park are more often heard than seen.

© State of New South Wales through the Office of Environment and Heritage

Click on the link for more information about Kwiambal National Park.

Macintyre River from Slippery Rock

Photos of Kwiambal National Park from 2009 and 2011

Photos of Kwiambal National Park from 2014

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