Dingo Creek Rainforest Nursery

Posted on May 11, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

I’m on a research trip, immersing myself in the beauty of the Manning Valley, a few hours drive north of Sydney. This area offers a breath-taking combination of rivers, rainforests, mountains and beaches. Its lush landscapes and national parks will provide a stunning setting for my new book. Aussie author Di Morrissey was born in Wingham, and she still lives in the valley. It became the title and setting for one of her bestselling books.(The Valley Pan Macmillan 2007)

I’ve been staying with an old school friend, Kim Gollan, who lives at Bobin, about an hour’s drive east of Tapin Tops National Park. Kim and her husband Pete run the magnificent forty hectare Dingo Creek Rainforest Nursery. They mainly grow plants endemic to the mid north coast of NSW, in order to conserve these species and make them available to home gardeners, farmers and restoration schemes. For example, they have provided thousands of plants for the Lord Howe Island World Heritage project, and the Manning Valley lowland flood-plain rainforests regeneration plan. They are also caretakers of Wingham Brush and Coocumbac Island (see previous post)

Kim’s stock-list reads like a Who’s Who of iconic subtropical rainforest trees: black booyong, flame tree, sassafras, tamarind, rosewood, yellow carabeen, Moreton Bay fig, plum pine, corkwood – the list goes on and on. There are lines of potted Red Cedars, a species logged into commercial extinction in the 1800’s. Along the driveway, wild cedar saplings spring up around a parent tree that Kim planted twenty years ago. Tree-ferns, stag-ferns and fish-bone ferns germinate naturally in pots and under walk ways. The place is bursting with life.

It’s not just the nursery and gardens that are impressive. Kim and Pete built their own character-laden mud-brick & stone home. Exposed beams and the extensive use of natural bush timber gives the house a delightful earthy feel. It seems to have risen organically from the hillside.

There is so much to see here! Rugged Tapin Tops National Park, high on the Great Eastern Escarpment. Legendary Ellenborough Falls, a horsetail waterfall on the Great Bulga Plateau with one of the longest single drops in the southern hemisphere. Or browse the stock at Tinonee Orchid Nursery, including a wide range of native orchids growing wild in the Manning Valley.

Exploring this magnificent region with Kim as my guide has been an amazing experience. I hope I can translate some of this beauty into words.

The Wingham Brush

Posted on May 4, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

I’m on a trip to research my new novel, and am taking inspiration for its setting from Tapin Tops National Park north-east of Wingham in New South Wales. The park lies on a spectacular section of the Great Eastern Escarpment.

Ten hectare Wingham Brush Nature Reserve, just a short stroll from the centre of town, is a rare rainforest remnant. Along with five hectare Coocumbac Island at Taree, it represents 90% of the remaining subtropical lowland rainforest in the Manning Valley. This tiny oasis boasts 195 species of native plants and 100 species of native birds. The most impressive trees in the reserve are the massive Moreton Bay figs, many centuries old. They are a type of strangler fig, and begin as a tiny seed, deposited in the fork of a host tree by birds or bats. The seedling lives as an epiphyte until its roots reach the ground. It then enlarges and strangles its host, eventually becoming freestanding. Like all figs, it has a unique relationship with wasps; figs are only pollinated by fig wasps, and fig wasps can only reproduce in fig flowers. Massive buttress roots support the weight of the trees in the shallow rainforest soils. Other interesting trees include paperberries, black apples, white cedars and rosewoods. Giant stinging trees grow close to the path, so visitors must be wary.

The Brush almost didn’t survive. By 1860 it had been selectively logged, especially for red cedar, and the remains of two saw pits can be seen today. It was saved from clear-felling in 1909, by being declared a reserve associated with the now historic wharf on the Manning River.

Manning River Inside Reserve

However by 1980 the Brush was so infested with weeds, that its very survival was threatened. Concerned locals commenced an innovative program to return the reserve to its natural state. The Wingham Brush Method has become an international model for rainforest restoration.

Manning River A Few Hundred Metres Clear Of Reserve

The Brush is an important maternity camp for vulnerable grey-headed flying foxes, and they can be seen roosting overhead. Wingham spent 70 years trying to kill off these fruit bats, before realising their importance. Flying foxes transport the seeds of a wide range of rainforest plants up to 40 km between camps, connecting isolated remnants to other rainforest gene pools.

Walking through Wingham Brush is like going back in time. Bittersweet, imagining the sheer majesty of these forests two hundred years ago, when they ranged from the coast all the way to the edge of the Great Eastern Escarpment. What a magnificent sight that would have been!

Research Trips

Posted on April 27, 2014 by jenniferscoullar

I’m off tomorrow on a research trip for my new novel, working title Turtle Reef. I know we live in a time where a vast amount of information is at our fingertips through the internet, without even leaving our desk. Books, histories, documentaries and academic journals are available online, and they are invaluable for authors constructing stories set outside their regular world.

However it’s still important if possible to physically spend time with a setting to capture it authentically. No amount of reading could convey the true grandeur of the high country, or the enchanted forests of the Bunya Mountains, or the evening beauty of reflected stars in the Murray’s dark waters. It’s enormously helpful for writers to experience these things first hand. Smells are especially hard to grasp without being there. A vivid imagination can create a world, but the eye of a keen observer can truly bring it to life.

That’s why I’m off to Queensland tomorrow to spend time in cane country, and also on Lady Elliot Island at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The blurb for my current work-in-progress goes something like this.

‘Unlucky-in-love zoologist Zoe King has given up on men. Moving from Sydney to the small sugar town of Kiawa means a fresh start and she is charmed by the region’s beauty – by its rivers and rainforests. By its vast cane fields, sweeping from the foothills down to the rocky coral coast. And by its people – its farmers and fishermen, unhurried and down to earth, proud of their traditions.

Her work at the Reef Centre provides all the passion she needs and Zoe finds a friend in Bridget, the centre’s director. So the last thing she expects is to fall for her boss’s boyfriend, cane king Quinn Cooper. When animals on the reef begin to sicken and die, Zoe’s personal and professional worlds collide. She faces a terrible choice. To protect the reef must she betray the man she loves?’

How fantastic, to be able to spend some more time in this beautiful part of Australia. The manuscript and I are going to have a ball!

Jennifer Scoullar – Bestselling Author of Australian Fiction

'A love affair with the wild …'

Tag Archives: Research Trips

Dingo Creek Rainforest Nursery

The Wingham Brush

Research Trips