Over 60 members of the community were present at the  unveiling of a sign to celebrate the protection of a crucial lot in an important habitat corridor that connects two World Heritage Areas in the heart Mission Beach.

A buy back of Lot 66 was made possible by decades of community commitment and partnerships focused on saving the cassowary and their special environment at the popular seaside tourist destination. 

Hello from Jungguy country,

Coastal wetlands are some of the most threatened habitats on the planet. The Melaleuca leucadendren swamps of Coquette Point are included in the World Heritage Wet Tropics and extended from the mouth of the Johnstone River to the Moresby Range, an area three kilometres long by ½ kilometre wide.

This swamp is a major fish spawning habitat and consists of large deep lagoons and shallow swamps of melaleuca, pandanus and tidal mangrove: this is the Johnstone River’s ‘everglades’.

Hello from Coquette Point,

A very wet, windy and cold week has at last broken into sunshine but only very late this afternoon.

This morning I accepted an invitation from Mandubarra elder Nellie Epong to be present at a turtle release at Cowley Beach. Although overcast the day was warm with a gentle wind blowing: a perfect day for a turtle release.

Hello from cold and very wet Coquette Point,

The weather systems combined to bring heavy rain to the Wet Tropics on Thursday night. Around 350 mm fell in the Innisfail, Mossman and Cairns’ hinterlands overnight and on Friday all the rivers ran red to the Coral Sea Lagoon.  A low over Victoria has pushed cold air up along the Queensland coast and it was winter woollies all day to-day with the temperature not getting over 18 - freezing for FNQ.

Hello from Coquette Point,

I was told by Jake a CCRC staffer that on Wednesday he saw a small male cassowary with three chicks near the new sewerage works alongside Ninds Creek. The chicks were about 40cm tall and their stripes were only just visible. Before Jake or the other workers could take a photograph Dad and the chicks disappeared into the rainforest: wonderful and surprising news.

It is most unusual for cassowary chicks to be born during winter. However, as no chicks were born last year in the Moresby Range/ Coquette Point area perhaps the cassowaries are catching up, after cyclone ‘Yasi’,  now that the forest is producing food again.

Hello from mysterious Coquette Point,

As the Super Moon rose tonight I am sure I saw ‘dark creatures’ coming out from the shadows.  An eerie eh-eh-eh- call murmured and then shrieked within the mangroves.

Hello from Coquette Point,

What a difference a week makes! Tonight the sun set in a rosy sky spreading shafts of light over a shimmering Johnstone River.

Hello from windy Coquette Point,

Cool and sunny Easter weather has morphed into wet and wild gale force winds which have lashed the coast since Thursday and more is to come. An area of low pressure, which is moving west coupled with a very large southern high has turned the normally gentle trade winds into the roaring 40’s.


The butterflies are having difficulty in managing the wind and a pale lemon form, or at least that is what I think it is,  of the Pale Triangle, graphium eurypylus, which is seldom seen in a resting mode, was easy to photograph this week.  Its cousin the green-spotted triangle seemed to cope better with the wind.