Our Area of Interest

Our database survey area (for enlargement of the map, 
click on the image)

The Fassifern area is in the south-west corner of South East Queens-land, and we enjoy ‘natting’ in our patch. However we do like exploring farther away, especially on our camps.

The area that the Fassifern Field Naturalists Club surveys stretches from the Great Dividing Range in the west to just beyond the Dugandan Range in the east; from Peak Crossing in the north to the Mt Barney National Park in the south which includes the NSW sections from Wilson's Peak to Mt Lindsay. The scenery in this area is outstanding, and of considerable geological interest. 

Mt Sugarloaf with the Great Dividing Range 

in the background 

There are three national parks within our area  — 
Main Range, Moogerah Peaks, and Mount Barney, and three lakes – Lake Moogerah, Lake Maroon and Lake Wyaralong. [Click on the name to go to the link.]

Mounts French, Edwards, Greville and Moon make up the Moogerah Peaks National Park, and are recognised not only for their fascinating geology, but also as important habitats of remnant “scrub”. Locally it is called vine scrub; a kind of hard, dry rainforest dominated by brigalow, with an understorey of softwoods and a festooning tangle of vines.

Before land clearing, much of the Fassifern Valley was covered by the 'Boonah scrub'. Now only a very small remnant of this vegetation type remains, and is protected within the Mount French section of Moogerah Peaks NP.

Otherwise the peaks are mostly covered in open eucalypt forest with montane heath on the exposed rock faces and rainforest in some sheltered areas.

With rainforest, vine scrub, eucalypt woodland, montane heath, and the lakes what more is wanted for a wonderful range of native flora and fauna? 

Montane heath on Mt French

Acknowledgements: http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/moogerah-peaks/about.html; http://germanydownunder.com/in-obum-scrub-article-by-pastor-aubpodlich/; https://sites.google.com/site/fassiferntrees/home/conservation

For more on the volcanic landscape of the Fassifern see "The Main Range" by Neville Stevens and Warwick Willmott in "Rocks & Landscape Notes", Geological Society of Australia (Queensland Division). 1st edition, September 1996.