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| John Young and the Mustang sports car |
This is the transcript of my story in the 25 August, 2025 edition of The Australian newspaper.
Controversial North Queensland naturalist John Young, hailed by supporters as “Australia's next Steve Irwin”, has been unmasked as a sexual predator following confirmation of his jailing for child sex abuse offences.
The revelation comes amid evidence indicating Young was widely assisted by fellow naturalists while hiding from police for more than a year to avoid facing charges. Young lied to friends about the reasons for his extraordinary escapade in order to win their trust. Valuable possessions hidden by friends at Young's request remain secreted, including a $70,000 Mustang sports car and one of Australia's biggest butterfly and moth collections, comprised of tens of thousands of specimens.
The Australian revealed in March that Young went into hiding when he failed to appear before the Tully Magistrates Court in August 2023 on four charges. He was tracked down in remote rainforest by police at Iron Range, near the top of Cape York Peninsula, in September 2024. The charges could not be revealed at that time because of their potential to lead to the identification of a victim of sexual assault or a child.
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| Buff-breasted Buttonquail |
Judge Joshua Trevino in the Cairns District Court sentenced Young to two years' jail in May when he pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent treatment of children under 16. Two further charges were dropped. The offences occurred between January and October, 2018. The relatively lenient sentence followed Young's guilty plea and evidence he produced of having a grave medical condition. A Queensland Department of Justice spokesperson said no non-publication orders are in force.
Young, 73, has been behind bars for 11 months. He has applied for parole but is understood to be pessimistic about his chances of early release.
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| Night Parrot |
Young attracted international attention in 2013 when he took the first photographs of the critically endangered night parrot, described at the time as the world's most mysterious bird. His career as a naturalist and film-maker has taken a battering before and since the night parrot find amid evidence of multiple false claims of discoveries and photographs of rare wildlife. Fresh evidence has emerged of another baseless claim.
As the 2023 court hearing in Tully approached, Young asked friends in tropical Queensland - including a leading figure in the conservation movement and well-known birding enthusiasts - to help him hide, claiming relatives were chasing him for the repayment of money he owed them.
Young made no mention of the sex abuse charges. He was offered a bolthole on an Atherton Tabelands property in which he hid - not from relatives in search of money, but from police in search of justice. He later travelled north to Iron Range, his favourite haunt, hoping to continue to elude police indefinitely.
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| Iron Range |
A relative identified by Young to friends as being after him for unpaid debts described the claim to The Australian as “absolute bullshit and extremely disappointing”. Young asked friends to hide possessions, claiming his relatives might seek possession of them. In fact, he feared that a compensation claim might arise as a consequence of the charges. Young is understood to have acquired the $70,000 Mustang under a four-year lease-purchase arrangement in 2020. It was paid off late last year while he was in custody.
In 2021, naturalist and author Lloyd Nielsen launched a public appeal for funds to aid his friend's research to study the critically endangered buff-breasted buttonquail - now the only bird species in Australia never to have been photographed. Nielsen said Young was financially destitute. His many friends in the natural history world poured thousands of dollars into an account set up by Nielsen.
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| Lloyd Nielsen |
Nielsen and Young insisted the bird was flourishing in savanna woodland north of the Atherton Tableland, but intensive surveys by University of Queensland scientists have failed to find any trace of it. Experts fear the the buttonquail has become the second bird on the Australian mainland – after the paradise parrot - to become extinct.
The Australian revealed in 2022 that a photograph by Young which he claimed to be the first of a buff-breasted buttonquail nest was a manipulated image of the nest of the common painted buttonquail. Experts also dismissed his claims to have taken the first photographs of the bird itself. Young and Nielsen repeatedly promised a joint scientific publication reproducing the photographs and providing evidence of their claims about the birds. It failed to materialise.
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| The nest falsely claimed to be that of a Buff-breasted Buttonquail |
Nielsen died in June after a long illness in Mareeba Hospital, not far from Young's cell in the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre. His funeral in Mt Molloy was attended by a Who's Who of North Queensland's naturalist community. Another close friend of Young, birding enthusiast Alwyn Simple, admits that he and others helped Young when Young was on the run, although they were unaware of the charges.
Mr Simple said he knows where Young's huge butterfly and moth collection is, along with the Mustang sports car. He does not know if funds raised for buttonquail research were used to help pay off the Mustang debt, adding: “I put my hand in my pocket to help him out with that buttonquail work. I funded it basically... I know John has lied to me but he's done a lot of good and I can't ignore that. The newspapers and all the other vultures just want to cut him down.”
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| John Young & Alwyn Simple |
Mr Simple said his friend will no longer be a public figures when he is released. “He can't hold his head up out there after this. He's going to vanish again.” He said Young was given five years to live when he was diagnosed with asbestosis in 2023, a consequence of him working with asbestos many years ago, adding: “I'm not sure exactly how sick he is.”
While Young has been in custody, a photograph of what he told naturalists was a new species of honeyeater surfaced. The image was supposedly taken in the area of woodland where he claimed to have photographed the buff-breasted buttonquail and its nest. Several ornithologists who have seen the image say it is an altered photograph of the white-eared honeyeater, a common species. Said one birder: “It looks like he's asked AI to cross the honeyeater with a banana.”
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| The claimed new honeyeater species |
The white-eared honeyeater photograph had in effect been digitally “coloured in”. The Australian revealed in 2006 how Young similarly altered the photograph of a double-eyed fig-parrot from North Queensland to claim it was a blue-browed fig-parrot - a species new to science. Young later admitted the claim was a ruse – part of plan by supporters to promote him as Australia's next Steve Irwin, the internationally renowned Sunshine Coast naturalist and film-maker who died earlier that year from a stingray barb.
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| White-eared Honeyeater |
Claims by Young to have found night parrots at multiple locations since his 2013 photographs, and to have photographed the bird's nests and eggs, were rejected by a scientific investigation in 2019, when he was sacked as an ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Critics say his false public comments insisting that the night parrot and the buff-breasted buttonquail are not uncommon have damaged conservation efforts to protect the two critically endangered birds.
Many of his supporters, however, remain loyal. “I believe he sees what he says he sees and I will always back him,” Mr Simple said.
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The following sentence was not included in the published story: Mr Simple said he would have helped Young even if he had been aware of the charges: "All this sex abuse stuff has gone overboard. I'm not game to kiss my grandaughter anymore in case I'm arrested."
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