Nightcap National Park

Description

Nightcap National Park is in New South Wales, Australia, 35 km north of Lismore.

The Park is part of the Shield Volcano Group of the World Heritage Site Gondwana Rainforests of Australia inscribed in 1986 and added to the Australian National Heritage List in 2007.

The park features a massif of peaks, ridges and gullies on the southern edge of the Mount Warning caldera. In places the range rises to more than 900 metres and is one of the state's wettest places.

The park has three main sections. Access to the Mount Nardi section, including Tuntable Falls and the Pholis Walk to Pholis Gap, is via sealed road from Nimbin.

The park contains Old Googarna Road past Mount Neville, and the Historic Nightcap Track to Mullumbinmby. From Dunoon along Terania Creek Road vehicle access is provided to the Terania Creek Basin and Protesters Falls.

Protesters Falls was the site of one of the biggest conservation battles of the late 1970s.

The park is home to a rich diversity of threatened plants and animals including; The Nightcap Oak Eidothea hardeniana (discovered in 2000), the Peach Myrtle Uromyrtus australis and The Minyon Quandong Elaeocarpus sedentarius. The Nightcap and nearby Koonyum Ranges are the only place on earth where the Peach Myrtle and Nightcap Oak can be found, while the Minyon Quandong is virtually endemic and is only known from a single tree outside these ranges.

Fauna threatened with extinction include the Albert's Lyrebird, Fleay's Barred Frog, and Masked Mountain Frog Philoria loveridgei.

It is classed by the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas as Category II.