July 2025 Activity Details - Friday meeting, and Sunday outing to Muntapa Tunnel & Palms National Park.

 CLUB MEETING: 7 pm, Friday 4 July 2025  

St. Anthony’s Community Centre, Memory Street, Toowoomba. The speakers' presentations are followed by official business and supper. 

Two speakers:

Dingo on K'gari
Photo:  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

1. Peter Jesser on 'Wild Dogs and Dingoes' (Peter has worked for the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines, and is a pest management consultant.)

2. Ann Alcock on 'Puffins to Penguins' (Ann, a professional freelance photographer, photojournalist, documentary photographer, and event photographer for newspapers and magazines, is not one to shy away from adventure.)

CLUB OUTING: Sunday 6 July 2025. Muntapa Tunnel and the Palms National Park, Cooyar

Meeting Time: 8.30am

Map of railway route
from Oakey to Cooyar

Where: Rotary Park on Campbell Street, Oakey (next to the Park House Motor Inn). This route closely follows the original Oakey-Cooyar railway line.

Description: This 287 metre single bore tunnel is unique in that it goes through the Great Dividing Range from the Murray-Darling river catchment to the Brisbane Valley catchment area. The tunnel has now been fenced to protect the roosting and breeding site of several thousand Bent-wing Bats.

Activities: Historical information signage, a picnic area and amenities, make this an interesting site to revisit. After morning-tea here we will travel through Cooyar north to the Palms National Park known as a roosting site for three different species of flying-fox - black, grey-headed and little red. (On last visit early June there were no flying-foxes present.)

Level of Fitness: easy to moderate

Facilities: Muntapa - BBQ, picnic tables, shelter & toilets; Palms - picnic tables, toilets in nearby Cooyar.

What to Bring: morning tea, lunch, water, chair, sun protection and wear closed shoes.

June Outing Report - Postmans Ridge and Helidon Spa, Sunday 08 June 2025. .

 Adapted from the TFNC July 2025 newsletter report of D. Pagel.

Withcott Waterlilies
Photo: M. Simmons

It was a clear winter’s day, and the temperature was much warmer below the Range when we met at our destination in Withcott. We strolled down a grassy slope past scattered Forest Red Gums Eucalyptus tereticornis where there was some evidence of koala activity in foliage and on bark, and past specimens of Soap Tree Alphitonia excelsa and Flat-stemmed Wattle Acacia complanata. The slope led to a large dam that was more like a picturesque billabong skirted by a path and fringed with Common Rush Juncus usitatus. On the water were a number of waterbirds, and patches of exotic Blue Water Lilies Nymphaea caerulea flowering on their tall stems. However, some flowers appeared larger, paler and to sit on the surface of the water. Surely, they were not the native Giant Water Lily Nymphaea gigantea, locally extinct, that years ago excited our Field Naturalists on outings to several locations on the Downs? (Yet to be confirmed.)

Rodent droppings
Photo: L. Moodie

We then moved on to an area of scrubby woodland  on poor thin soil at Postmans Ridge. Here the Gatton Sandstone that had not been so conspicuous at our first stop demonstrated how friable and easily eroded it can be. Our sandy road became impassable because of deeply eroded channels, probably the result of tunnelling where the clayey subsoil contains sodium salts that dissolve or ‘melt away’ on wetting. On one side of this road, we noted stands of Black She-oak Allocasuarina littoralis and termite activity both on trees and in a prominent mound that was capped with the dark droppings of an unidentified species of rat. Those who walked on the other side noted Geebung Persoonia sp., Cough Bush Cassinia laevis and Sweet Canthium Psydrax odorata subsp. buxifolium. Acacias included Flat-stemmed Wattle Acacia complanata and Blake’s Wattle Acacia Blakei subsp. diphylla.

Fungus Pisolithes sp. 
Photo: D. Pagel

 Emerging from the road surface itself was a fresh specimen of the Horse Dung Fungus Pisolithus sp. that had been spared by many of our vehicles’ tyres. Its white globe would finally become dark brown and crumble when mature to reveal its spore mass. This fungus has been known to emerge on roadsides through bitumen.

Our final destination was Helidon Spa where Nats enjoyed lunch at the water’s edge while admiring large numbers of Plumed Whistling Ducks and the image of Little Corellas in a eucalypt, vivid white against an intense blue sky. Warm thanks to Melanie for organizing this enjoyable excursion.

Little Corellas at Helidon Spa
Photo: M. Simmons

Species Lists

Birds: 

Withcott. Superb Fairy-wren, Magpie Lark, Willie Wagtail, Common Myna, House Sparrow.

Postmans Ridge.  Plumed Whistling Duck, Australian Wood Duck, Pacific Black Duck, Hardhead, Australasian Grebe, Crested Pigeon, Little Black Cormorant, White Faced Heron, Dusky Moorhen, Pale-headed Rosella, Noisy Minor, Grey Butcherbird, Magpie-lark, Welcome Swallow. 

Helidon Spa. Plumed Whistling Duck, Pacific Black Duck, Australasian Grebe, Dusky Moorhen, Straw-necked Ibis, Masked Lapwing, Little Corella, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Pied Butcherbird, Australian Magpie, Willie Wagtail.

Butterflies: Small Green Banded Blue, Caper White, Common Grass Yellow, Wanderer (Monarch).