Burleigh Heads

Small coastal park in popular holiday area

Access 

The park can be reached by travelling from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. It is located on Tallebudgera Creek just 16 kilometres south of Southport.

Activities

Burleigh Heads National Park is a small oasis of green in the highly-urbanised Gold Coast. There is a walking track that traverses the parks rocky headland while another completes a circuit through some open forest and rainforest country. It is an ideal place for a picnic or just to quietly contemplate.

Features

There are several different vegetation types to be found in the park. There are areas of tussocky grassland featuring kangaroo grass ( Themeda australis) and areas closer to the coast which have Pandanus as the dominant tree species. The open forest features such eucalypts as ironbark (Eucalyptus drepanophylla), bloodwood (E. intermedia) and the associated turpentine (Syncarpia glomulifera). This is where you once would have seen one of Australia’s most familiar animals, the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus).

The insects of Burleigh Heads often go unnoticed but they deserve mention, particularly butterflies. Three common butterflies found in the park include the eastern brown crow (Euploea tulliolus tulliolus), the common crow (Euphloea core corinna) and the blue tiger (Danaus hamatus hamatus). The crow family of butterflies are not noted for their beauty as they are black and white. The common Australian crow butterfly, like all butterflies, has species preferences for the type of plants it eats. The crows’ food plants include the figs (Ficus platypoda) and (F. obliqua), (Hoya australis) and (Leichardtia australis). It lays its eggs on one of these food plants. The larvae often are found on the leaves of exotic trees such as oleanders. When the larvae decides to pupate however it finds one of its native food plants.

Because of the isolated nature of Burleigh Heads National Park there are often unusually high numbers of some species of wildlife. Brush turkeys (Alectura lathami) are particularly common. It’s a large black bird with a red head and yellow collar but is not related to the domestic turkey as its name would suggest. Brush turkeys belong to a special group of birds which don’t incubate their eggs by sitting on them. Instead they build a mound of rotting vegetation into which they lay their eggs. The heat of bacterial decomposition incubates the eggs. During the breeding season the male brush turkey develops a pendulous yellow wattle. There are hairs on this wattle which the brush turkey is believed to use to judge the temperature in the mound. By scraping leaves off the mound or adding new ones the brush turkey can regulate the mound temperature.