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