Blackbutt Forest Reserve is about 70 hectares of native forest and parklands in the middle of Shellharbour suburbia. And even though I grew up in Albion Park, I’d never actually been there. So, on one of the recent rare sunny days, I decided to change that and packed up my camera and headed out to see what all the fuss was about it. It took me a while and a bit of stumbling around blindly, but now I totally get it. The reserve can be whatever you want it to be. A place to have a barbecue with friends and to let the kids run themselves ragged at the playground. A quiet spot to walk the dog. To jog. To ride the bike or to take the camera and stalk the local wildlife. It’s a beautiful place, absolutely chockfull of fauna and flora diversity, amongst the gum trees. 

There’s a few entrances to the reserve and I found myself at the entrance at Shellharbour Road. I parked my car and looked around and thought to myself, “Now what?” There was a large undercover barbecue area but I wasn’t there to sit and ponder life. I wanted to find all the things! And so not finding a dedicated path during my quick spin around, I followed a jogger up a small incline, which opened up to a gum-lined field. And here’s where the magic happened. There was no real path, just a place where the grass had been flattened from various footfalls. I followed it into a native-violet-lined, dirt pathway where twittering superb fairy-wrens popped up every now and then and male golden-whistlers whistled to the nearby females. 

I turned a corner and the sky exploded with dragonflies and damselflies. They zigzagged around the sky snatching at insects, before landing on nearby leaves and twigs to feast on their newly caught meals.

In my effort to chase down these critters I had stumbled upon another carpark, a big playground, another barbecue area, lots of picnic tables dotted around under the gums, a wide open field that would be perfect for throwing the frisbee or kicking around a ball or lazing around on picnic rugs and hallelujah, a huge toilet block, including a baby change table. 

I walked down the hill, following the chattering of the local grey-headed flying fox population and being spring I was lucky enough to see several mums, and even luckier to catch a glimpse of their new pups as they briefly opened their leather-looking wings. The pups clung tightly to their mothers, occasionally stretching their own wings, their little batty faces turning, their eyes blinking at the sun. 

It was so lovely, I packed the husband along for my return trip the next day and this time I saw loads of jacky dragons, small, agile lizards, including one sitting in the lantana where the day before dozens of dragonflies had rested. This lizard knew how to get an easy meal! And a beautiful Marsh Snake, lazing in the sun, not far from the damp confines of its rainforest home. There were so many trails that I didn’t walk down, lots of species I didn’t see – including the leucistic kookaburras (all white) that are known to visit the area. 

If you’re on iNaturalist, you can look at the 156 species that have been identified at the site so far here and watch the fab vid about the BioBlitz that took place on the site in 2021 and see some of the species that were recorded here.

Find directions to Blackbutt Forest reserve here