Wild BNE

The pastel love flower is a charming, shade-loving native plant. The stretch of highway on the way to the Gold Coast running between Mount Gravatt and Yatala has always been a bit of a vague blur to me at the best of times, and a peak hour nuisance at worst. An endless strip of superstores, car dealerships and fast food outlets, I tend to hurry on through as quickly as the traffic will allow, chasing greener horizons further south. It turns out that the view from the M1 doesn’t really do this area justice though, as I found out recently while exploring the Logan suburb of Underwood. 

Crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes)  are numerous throughout Edens Landing. Featured areas: (1) Edens Parkland, (2) Nexus Forest Park, (3) Suburban Edens Landing, and (4) the Water Tower hill. Image courtesy of Google Maps. Edens Landing, as it stands today, is a residential suburb along a ridge between Logan and Beenleigh that has existed for thirty years. For over a century prior to this however, it was a rural area used by German and English farmers to grow small crops of maize, potatoes and tobacco. One of the residents in the area during these early days of European settlement was Henry Eden, who pioneered a public ferry system at various points along the Logan River, an act of bravery given that the river was, back then, at the southern distribution limit of the estaurine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus). When the area was sold to and developed by Leighton Holdings in the 1980s, it was originally called Holmview Heights, but the name changed shortly after to honour...