Australian_Geographic_-_October_2015_

September–October 2015 71

FIND more spectacular island imagery online at:

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/issue128

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC thanks Keswick Developments

for help with getting to these islands.

For me, it was a landscape that revealed itself best

from up high. On an afternoon light-plane flight

over Keswick and its surrounding islands, Glenn

Leigh-Smith, managing director and chief pilot

of the Island Air charter service that runs from

Mackay, says that his favourite run is also out

to Bushy. Once, he saw schools of reef and bronze

whaler sharks swimming from lagoon to lagoon,

ahead of the shadow of his plane.

From the air above Keswick, the archipelago

shimmers and settles: Aspatria and Scawfell islands

to the east; Cockermouth, Brampton and Carlisle

islands to the north, with the Whitsundays unspool-

ing beyond that.

Glenn turned his eight-seater Airvan towards

the mainland before the run back to Keswick. Across

that strip of the Coral Sea, behind Mackay, the Clarke

Range loomed. From this height and distance it

looked as if its mountains could be skipping towards

the coast, wishing that they, too, could leap out and

join this island playground. AG

To Darren Larcombe, a senior ranger with
Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS), the
South Cumberland Islands are “significantly different
from the Whitsundays”, which begin just 80km to
the north. For one thing they’re drier, which means
that the rainforest takeover of grasslands, observed
on other islands, hasn’t happened as quickly here.
Traditional fire regimes were also intact until as
recently as the 1930s, and QPWS hopes that
reintroducing fire on St Bees and on Brampton
Island to the north might ensure the preservation
of these grasslands.
His favourite location within the South
Cumberland group is Bushy Islet, which is due east
of Keswick, out on the edge of the reef. Not only is
it the GBR’s highest cay, at 12m above sea level, it’s
also the only wooded cay along the reef ’s 900km
central stretch. “It supports a unique pisonia forest
and an amazing migratory bird population,” he says,
“as well as the most northerly loggerhead turtle nests.
We’re talking high conservation value.”
But despite this surplus of extraordinary
biodiversity, these islands remain little visited.
Darren estimates the number of tourists coming
across to the South Cumberland’s six designated
QPWS campsites fluctuates, but may total between
60 and 85 people a year.