SKY WALKING

Explore the untamed beauty of the Gondwana Rainforests, where pristine pockets of wilderness beckon with thundering waterfalls, misty forest trails and encounters with rare wildlife.

- Catherine Lawson

A few decades ago, when my partner and I were successfully avoiding growing up, we would park our van in Nightcap National Park, stoke a campfire and strum a guitar as possums emerged from the treetops. We'd bushwalk in the rain to the base of Protesters Falls just to hear the Fleay's barred frogs call out to each other, and take long, leisurely drives out of Byron Bay to teeter atop long-drop waterfalls and skinny dip far beneath them.

Not too much has changed about us or the far-north-coast rainforests we loved. Protesters Falls is still a precious tangle of wild on Bundjalung - and in particular Widjabul - country. Hidden upstream through 700 metres of Bangalow palms along Bat Cave Creek, the falls were named for the community who fought for its protection. Their efforts not only saved the falls, but also paved the way for the creation of Nightcap National Park and its inclusion in the outstanding Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area.

Nightcap National Park harbours endemic Nightcap oaks and a vulnerable feathered cohort made up of rufous scrub birds, red goshawks and sooty and masked owls, and there are frogs so endangered that swimming is prohibited. But the protection that this unique World Heritage area offers wild animals peters out downstream where cleared agricultural lands sever those once-great forests that covered the ancient continent of Gondwana.

Today, Australia's most fragmented World Heritage area collectively safeguards an archipelago of 41 remnant islands of pristine rainforest located between Newcastle and Brisbane: Barrington Tops and the Border Ranges, to Washpool and Oxley Wild Rivers National Parks. These parks are small but critically important, with the kinds of primitive ecosystems that excite scientists and nature lovers alike, and home to plants and wildlife species relatively unchanged from their fossilised ancestors.