Buckley's  Hole Conservation Park

Buckley's Hole Conservation Park is situated in the south-west corner of Bribie Island, the northern-most sand island in Moreton Bay, some 50 kilometres north of Brisbane. The park covers an area of 87.7 hectares and contains a freshwater lagoon, woodland, open forest and beach. It is this diversity of habitat that has led to such a large number of bird species being recorded in this small area, the present total standing at 270.

The park is also significant for its cultural heritage. It contains two shell middens of Aboriginal origin and Matthew Flinders landed at South Point on July 16, 1799. This was the first documented landing of Europeans in southern Queensland and the scene of the famous skirmish between Flinders and local Aborigines.

Buckley's Hole may be reached by crossing the Bribie Island bridge from Sandstone Point and heading south alongside the Pumicestone Passage to reach the south-western corner of the island. The park can be accessed from The Boulevarde, where there is a hide that overlooks the lagoon, or via the track that runs from from Tully Street to Red Beach.

Buckley's Hole was originally a shallow lagoon, fed by a slow-running creek, which periodically flushed into Moreton Bay. In the early 1980s, perhaps even earlier, local residents complained about the problem of mosquitoes and sandflies, a product of this habitat and its associated mangroves. Caboolture Shire Council attempted to solve the problem by constructing a sand wall in order to block the seaward outlet and excluding salt water, to form a freshwater lagoon. The result is the lagoon that exists today.

According to local folklore, a fisherman by the name of Buckley favoured an area of deep-water directly offshore from where the lagoon is now. This area, which was particularly good for fishing, became known as Buckley's Hole. The name has since come to refer both to the lagoon and the conservation park.

In the late 1980s there were plans to convert the area into a boating marina. To help avert such a disaster, a checklist of the birds seen in the area during 1986-1990 was presented to the Queensland parliament. In 1991 Buckley's Hole was gazetted as an environmental park and in 1994 dedicated as a conservation park.

(This article is adapted from the introduction to the booklet "Birds of Buckley's Hole Conservation Park", published in January 2004.)

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