Kooloonbung Creek Nature Park and the adjacent Cattlebrook Creek area, located in the centre of town, cover some 52 hectares. The park has been developed to preserve an area of natural bushland.
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It is apparent to me, as a recent resident, the Friends of Kooloonbung Creek Nature Park and Port Macquarie-Hastings Council have greatly improved the environmental and recreational quality of the area, to the extent the park must rank as one of the outstanding urban bushland reserves in NSW.
It has easily traversed tracks covering more than 3 kilometres; seating areas; an arboretum highlighting local rainforest trees; an historic cemetery, and a very pleasant picnic area at the northern end of the reserve.
The diverse eco-systems include several types of wetland plant communities, which are considered threatened in NSW, and together with open water, cover the largest area of the reserve. Paperbarks, mangroves, swamp oak, cheese tree, palms, treefern and swamp mahogany eucalypts are the common trees here.
On the drier land there is a fascinating mix of wet and dry eucalypt forest and patches of regenerating rainforest. At the Kooloonbung Close entrance mature scribbly gums and tallowwoods, and swamp mahogany, are favoured by koalas.
Parallel to Fisher and Hollingworth streets wet sclerophyll forest includes flooded gums and blackbutts, while the regenerating rainforest here has cheese tree, scentless rosewood, red ash, sandpaper fig, guioa, and bangalow palm. Native ginger, cordyline and cunjevoi are quite common as understorey plants in these moist forest communities. In the north east of the reserve there are several large, small-leaved rusty figs with extensive surface root systems. A drier forest with red bloodwood and coastal banksia trees, and an understorey of grass-like sedges and shrubs, grows in the south east near Begonia Place.
Of the 160 bird species in the park, the eastern yellow robin, golden whistler, grey fantail, lewins honeyeater, rainbow lorikeet, little wattlebird, grey butcherbird and laughing kookaburra, are always present. The yellow and black regent bowerbird is occasionally spied, while over the warmer months the beautiful rufous fantail breeds here and the scarlet honeyeater is seen.
