Gatton National Park — Attraction in Woodlands

The national park is full of unique native plant species which are hard to find growing anywhere else near Gatton. There are also koalas, kangaroos, lace monitors and probably a lot of nocturnal native animals living here. I found a koala footprint on one of the roads. Near woodlands Rd there is an endangered semi-evergreen vine thicket (SEVT) plant community. 90 percent of SEVT in Australia has been cleared. It would be nice to have a small carpark and for QPWS who are supposed to manage the park to crack down on illegal vehicle access, fix the access gate on woodlands Rd, and block off illegally made tracks. There's some really bad erosion and spreading of environmental weeds caused by 4WD and dirt bike use. Go to black duck valley if you want to 4WD and destroy the bush. If a fire started from someone's ignition it would destroy the endangered vine thicket vegetation has they are species which are not adapted to fire. I've emailed QPWS twice about my concerns and have not heard back yet. I hope they see...

As with most National Parks and other parks in Queensland, people can't enter it to enjoy it. There's no facilities, you can't drive in, no car park. I have no problem with restricting access to some areas to protect them, but where can Queenslanders and visitors go to just be in nature without having to fill out a permission form from the nanny state and pay money? Public land in this country isn't public. For the size of the place it demonstrates that control is confined to a very small number of people who don't seem to be working...

A lovely little piece of dry woodland. Interesting and diverse species. Some remarkable prickly pear trees which are weeds of course but are spectacular none the less.

Be careful on Saturdays as the little boys play their war games with guns...