As epicormic continue to sprout from the trees and life returns to normal after the chaos of the Christmas storms our beautiful national parks have finally all reopened.
Jessica Rosewell, Acting Senior Ranger with National Parks and Wildlife Gold Coast, said she was pleased they were able to re-open the last remaining park, Cedar Creek Falls recently.
Cedar Creek sustained the worst damage with structural damage to the toilet block and dangerous trees that needed to be removed.
“It was in the line of the tornado and strongest part of the storm,” Jessica explained.
“We are still in the process of clearing fire breaks which had trees covering them.”
“Trees were hung up in other trees making them dangerous. The open eucalypt forests saw the most damage.”
She said trying to find available contractors to fix the toilet block also slowed the re-opening.
The next worst hit was the Knoll which had a lot of trees down.
Witches Falls and Joala suffered less damage with the rainforest providing some protection.
National Park crews came from as far as the Sunshine Coast to help the local team of five with the clean-up and Jessica said most walking tracks were cleared within three weeks.
“The clean-up was one of the biggest we’ve seen for Tamborine,” she said.
Work on the fire breaks is continuing, but the good news is there appears to have been little impact to the wildlife with reports of gliders and possums still coming in and no injured wildlife found in the aftermath.
“Koalas may have found it hard where leaves were stripped from trees, but the new growth will now provide new assistance, as they tend to prefer the new juicy leaves,” Jessica noted.
“Work is ongoing and full recovery will take years for the eucalypt forest to develop the proper canopy again.”
“I don’t even recognise some areas because there are so many leaves stripped from the canopy and the grass is growing so quickly with the additional light that’s now coming in.”
Local, Steve Field’s favourite pastime is walking in the national park with his 17-year-old grandson, Travis Field and has welcomed the news of the re-opening but believes it could have been done far sooner.
“What happened to the mountain was really bad and I understand it can’t be fixed in five minutes, but we are into our fifth month,” he stated.
