Qualla: Susan Island Nature Reserve

Susan Island Nature Reserve: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poyt448 Peter Woodard, CC0. At dusk in high summer the sky over Grafton darkens twice. First the sun goes down; then the bats rise. From a wooded island in the middle of the Clarence River, tens of thousands of grey-headed flying foxes lift off at once and pour outward to feed on the flowering forests beyond town - a living cloud that has launched from this same spot since before Europeans ever named the place. The island is Susan Island, three kilometres long and barely 400 metres wide, and its upstream third holds something the surrounding valley has almost entirely lost.

Image: Poyt448 Peter Woodard | CC0

Susan Island Nature Reserve: The Last Rainforest of the Valley

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of Susan Island was cleared long ago - logged for timber, grazed, even used for Grafton's first rifle range. What survived, on the western end, is the largest remnant of lowland subtropical rainforest left in the entire Clarence Valley, a rare patch of an ecosystem now liste...

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Susan Island Nature Reserve: When the Sky Fills with Wings

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poyt448 Peter Woodard, CC0. The island's great spectacle is its flying foxes. Grey-headed flying foxes use it year-round as a roost and, crucially, as a maternity camp - a nursery where mothers carry and raise their young. In a normal summer the colony numbers in the thousands; when the nearby eucalyptus fo...

Image: Poyt448 Peter Woodard | CC0

Susan Island Nature Reserve: A Women's Place

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before any of this was mapped or protected, Aboriginal people came to the island to fish, to gather food and medicine from the forest, and to collect fibre for nets and bags. To the Gumbaynggirr, Susan Island carries a deeper meaning still: it is a women's site, a place of o...

Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Susan Island Nature Reserve: A Reserve Worth Saving

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poyt448 Peter Woodard, CC0. Keeping the remnant alive has been a long, patient fight against weeds rather than chainsaws. From the late 1980s, parks staff and volunteers began clearing the invaders that smother northern rivers rainforest - camphor laurel, broad-leaved privet, and the curtain-forming exotic ...

Image: Poyt448 Peter Woodard | CC0