The environmental nightmare that is the Sunshine Coast's Coochin Creek

 

Shining Flycatcher

A developmental nightmare is emerging on the southern fringe of Queensland's Sunshine Coast that demolishes the environmental reputation of Premier David Crisafulli's Liberal National Party Government. Twin project approvals will transform the quiet rural backwater of Coochin Creek into a bustling, noisy tourism hotspot on the fringe of internationally protected wetlands. Habitat images in this blog post were taken during a morning visit today (26/02/2026).

Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Jarrod Bleijie used special powers to “call in” the projects by the Comiskey Group, fast-tracking them to avoid scrutiny by the Sunshine Coast Council. This is the kind of stuff that was the hallmark of former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's darkest days.

Bleiji gave the first tick in January to the Coochin Creek Holiday Resort, absurdly labelled as a “family friendly ecotourism experience”. The 150-site park hosts 75 cabins and 75 campsites along with a 1,000-square metre recreation building, a waterslide, firepits and assorted bits and pieces, including a 2.4-hectare sewage treatment plant to process 64,400 litres of effluent daily. The park will generate 85,600 visitors annually.

Shortly after came approval for a music festival venue adjacent to the tourist park on a 150-hectare site. It will host events year-round for up to 35,000 festival goers in an area that the promoters compare to the North Byron Parklands, the site for Byron Bay's famed Bluesfest events. This approval follows the recent collapse of other music venues in the Sunshine Coast area.

All of this will unfold at the end of a quiet, narrow road on the shore of Pumicestone Passage, the wetlands of which are listed by the RAMSAR Convention - an international treaty intended to save what's left of the planet's important wetlands. I have seen from my kayak very close to Coochin Creek large numbers of migratory shorebirds feeding and resting. Australia is a signatory to several international treaties requiring the country to protect habitat for these shorebirds. Among those at Coochin Creek are numbers of the critically endangered Far Eastern Curlew and Curlew-Sandpiper.

Far Eastern Curlew

The Comiskey Group operates the Sandstone Point Holiday Resort opposite Bribie Island about 20 kilometres south of Coochin Creek. What the Coochin Creek projects will do is threaten the integrity of the South East Queensland Northern Inter-Urban Break - a green buffer zone that separates Brisbane from the Sunshine Coast. It is only a matter of time, it seems, before there will be a continuous urban belt stretching from the Queensland-NSW border north to Noosa.

Pumicestone Passage is home to a thriving population of dugongs along with good numbers of dolphins and turtles. Its extensive mangrove forests provide breeding habitat for numerous fish as well as harbouring a large population of the regionally scarce Shining Flycatcher and many other birds, including nesting Black Bitterns. In open forest and melaleuca woodland in the area, other birds of note include the southern-most population of Large-tailed Nightjar and the elusive Pale-vented Bush-hen.

Pale-vented Bush-hen

Crisafulli's government thumbed its nose at the government's own State Assessment and Referral Agency. The agency concluded that the development did not comply with planning laws and was at odds with the Rural Landscape and Rural Production Area designation for the site. There was no demonstrated need for the development which violated protections for the South East Queensland Northern Inter-Urban Break, the agency found.

Mangrove Honeyeater

In a letter last year to Bleijie, the agency said there is no overriding need in the public interest for the development, noting that the site abutted Pumicestone National Park and Pumicestone Passage, which was part of the Moreton Bay RAMSAR-protected wetland. It was also inconsistent with the goals and strategies of the ShapingSEQ 2023 planning scheme.

Nor has the project been referred under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, despite the risk of impacts on RAMSAR wetlands and species of national significance.

So what are the tourist park visitors going to do with their time after getting there along a road that will need to be substantially widened and improved, inevitably boosting the wildlife roadkill toll? There are no beaches and the water is not safe for swimming with its healthy population of bull sharks. Presumably that means lots more fishing and lots more boats on the water, further disturbing shorebirds already seriously stressed at other roosting and feeding grounds in the region, such as Toorbul, not far from the Comiskeys' Sandstone Point developments. The entire passage will now be a boating free-for-all.

These two developments are seriously flawed. Register your concern by emailing Jarrod Bleijie:  kawana@parliament.qld.gov.au and dpc@premiers.qld.gov.au

Vale Eric Zillmann, wildlife warrior extraordinaire

 

Eric Zillmann in December 2025

Eric Zillmann, an acclaimed naturalist and true gentleman, has passed away at the grand age of 102 in the Bundaberg nursing home that has been his home for the past few years.

Eric's achievements are legendary. From rediscovering the rare Macadamia jansenisre tree in 1982 to greatly expanding the knowledge of birds and other animals that were his life-long passion. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is that he is almost certainly the last person to have seen the now extinct Paradise Parrot. He died peacefully last night at about midnight.

Paradise Parrots - illustration by Tony Pridham

As a young teenager, Eric encountered the parrots regularly across several years in the 1930s while mustering cattle near Wallaville, his home town south of Gin Gin, inland from Bundaberg. He also uncovered an active nest in a termite mound he was removing. A road in Wallaville today bears his name.

Eric was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1999 for his service to the observation, recording and promotion of Australia's natural history. He was awarded an Honorary Master of Science in 1994 by the Central Queensland University (below) in recognition of his significant contributions to the natural sciences. For many years he wrote stories packed with useful information on wildlife for the newsletter of the Fraser Coast branch of the local Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and for his local newspaper.

In his Bundaberg nursing home room, the medal and degree - along with field notes, copies of published stories and some of the huge collection of photographs he amassed - had pride of place on the bedside shelves. I met with him there for a few hours in December 2024 when he recounted his memories of the Paradise Parrot sightings. “They are as clear today as when I saw them,” he said. Aged 100 then (he would have been 103 next April), his mind remained sharp and focused.

Eric relived with joy his memories of his favourite pair of local Barking Owls, and the hours he spent watching the nests of the rare Square-tailed Kite. I've no doubt he would have been happy to chat all day if I'd had the time.

Square-tailed Kite

However Eric, one of the few surviving veterans from World War II, said he was ready to let go. With failing eye sight and limited mobility, he'd had enough. He was hanging on, but wasn't sure quite sure why. He said to me: “The only birds I see from here is the odd peewee (magpie-lark) walking past. What's the point?”

I had known Eric for more than half a century, seeing him from time to time. Back in 1971, as a teenage birder, I hitch-hiked from Brisbane to Gin Gin to join a Queensland Ornithological Society campout that Eric had organised. At the time Eric's nephew, Greg Czechura, was a close friend. I hiked through the night and rain to get to the camping site. Eric and his wife promptly told me not to unpack my meagre tent and to sleep in their caravan annex. I didn't need to open my cans of baked beans; they insisted on feeding me for the whole three days of the outing.

Black-chinned Honeyeater

I had not been birding long at the time and was very keen to share his experience and knowledge, which by that time was considerable. Eric went out of his way to do that. I was very excited when he flushed my first Eastern Grass Owl from a sugar cane farm outisde Gin Gin. Almost as good was my first Black-chinned Honeyeater in a flowering grevillea. These things I remember as if they were recent.

Eric Zillmann & Trevor Quested in Bundaberg in 2011

Our mutual friend Trevor Quested was taken by motor neuron disease in 2015 at his Bundaberg home at the age of 66. I had joined Trevor, another accomplished field naturalist who also contributed so much to knowledge of the region's avifauna, and Eric on the occasional bird-watching trip over the years prior to that. Both were plumbers by occupation and they admired each other greatly.

RIP Eric Zillmann, wildlife warrior extraordinaire.

Eastern Grass Owl