Qualla: Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park

Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere behind a long wire fence at the southern edge of the Little Sandy Desert, a bilby is digging. Its kind vanished from this Country generations ago, hunted out of the open desert by feral cats and foxes that arrived with European settlement. That a bilby digs here again is not an accident of nature but the result of years of patient work by the Martu people and the scientists they invited onto their land. Matuwa is the place that work has restored, and its name is a homecoming as much as a label on a map.

Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park: From Lorna Glen to Matuwa

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For much of the twentieth century this was Lorna Glen, a pastoral lease where cattle grazed the fragile arid soils. When the running of stock ended, the land returned to those who had always held it under law older than any lease. The Martu traditional owners, through the Tarlka ...

Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park: Bringing the Animals Home

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Australia has lost more mammal species than any other country, most of them small desert creatures with no defence against cats and foxes. Matuwa is one of the front lines in reversing that loss. Early attempts to release mala and burrowing bettongs straight onto open country fai...

Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park: Country That Holds Secrets

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The park was deliberately split from the reserve beside it, and the reason matters. The national park is open to visitors, but the Lake Carnegie nature reserve is not, because it holds sites sacred to the Martu that are not for outside eyes. This is conservation on Aboriginal ter...

Matuwa Kurrara Kurrara National Park: A Model for the Desert

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Matuwa has become something larger than a single park. As an Indigenous Protected Area and the heart of one of Australia's biggest animal translocation programs, it shows what becomes possible when traditional knowledge and modern science work the same ground. Martu rangers read ...