> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# On Wooroora, a Jirrbal Elder walks the land where his great grandmother was born
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/wooroora/
- Published: 2026-10-30T05:36:27.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-07T09:53:44.000Z
- Description: His great grandmother was born on Wooroora, and until this spring Uncle Kurt Noble had never set foot on it. Bush Heritage Australia is $5.3 million short of buying the station and joining rainforest to reef, with Jirrbal people helping care for it, and the deadline is 24 December.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Conservation, Rewilding, All stories

Picture an Elder standing in open woodland on the edge of the Wet Tropics, about 100 kilometres south west of Cairns, on land where his great grandmother was born and that he has never been able to walk. Uncle Kurt Noble, a senior Jirrbal Elder, went out to Wooroora station this spring with Bush Heritage Australia, rangers and other Traditional Custodians, and told the National Indigenous Times what it meant: "I myself have never had the opportunity to come back here until now, which is really great." Wooroora is 20,333 hectares of rainforest, wet sclerophyll forest and savanna woodland, nearly 98 per cent intact, and it shares a fence with Bush Heritage's Yourka Reserve. Bush Heritage has wanted it since 2010, and when a wind farm proposed for the station was refused in 2024, the door opened. It asked the Jirrbal Traditional Custodians first, and got what it calls a resounding yes. Rachel Lowry, Bush Heritage's chief executive, calls Wooroora "a once in a lifetime opportunity". More than $19 million of the $24.7 million needed to buy it and manage it for five years is already in, three times anything Bush Heritage has raised before, including almost $2.5 million from the foundation associated with Patagonia after Lowry pitched it at the 2025 UN climate week in New York, and $6 million from an anonymous Australian philanthropist. Now it needs the final $5.3 million by 24 December, and a group of supporters will match the first $2.245 million given.

![A southern cassowary with blue neck and tall casque walking through dense green rainforest](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/wooroora-inside.jpg)

A southern cassowary in the rainforest of north Queensland. Photo: Dave Kimble, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why this patch matters is a map thing. Take down the fence with Yourka (43,575 hectares) and you have a 63,833 hectare climate refuge that completes a 429,000 hectare corridor between Koombooloomba and Tully Falls national parks, and because Wooroora's headwaters flow towards the Great Barrier Reef, it ties two World Heritage areas together. Its wet sclerophyll forest has more than halved across the region since the 1940s, and this is the largest unprotected stretch left. Southern cassowaries live here, along with Lumholtz's tree kangaroo, the northern greater glider, the red goshawk, the endangered magnificent broodfrog and koalas at the northern edge of their range. Dr Jo Axford, Bush Heritage's Head of Region North, says nobody has looked at the invertebrates yet. For the Jirrbal, the plan is already taking shape. Liam Roberts, chair of the Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation, talks of planning days, cultural heritage surveys, a ranger program that could grow across Wooroora, and camps on Country where Elders and young people sit together and the stories get told. "This is a key part of country that we can't find anywhere else," he says. Every gift before Christmas Eve, Lowry says, helps get there.

### Sources and links

Our short take: from Bush Heritage Australia's media release of 29 October 2026, "A once in a lifetime chance to connect the rainforest to the reef in Far North Queensland", with the Jirrbal voices from the National Indigenous Times (Joseph Guenzler, 30 October 2026) and the donor detail from Guardian Australia (Joe Hinchliffe, 29 October 2026). Photographs: as credited in captions.

- [Bush Heritage Australia, the Wooroora release](https://www.bushheritage.org.au/news/wooroora-opportunity) Every figure, the species, the Lowry and Murphy quotes.
- [Donate to Bush Heritage](https://www.bushheritage.org.au/donate) Where the final $5.3 million goes; the $2.245 million match.
- [Bushtracks, "Wooroora: a meeting place for nature"](https://www.bushheritage.org.au/news/wooroora-a-meeting-place-for-nature) Jo Axford on the landscape (Keira Proust, 15 October 2026).
- [National Indigenous Times, "Jirrbal Elders return to Country as $24.7 million conservation campaign continues"](https://nit.com.au/30-10-2026/27250/jirrbal-elders-return-to-country-as-247m-conservation-campaign-continues) Uncle Kurt Noble, Liam Roberts and Ross Mitchell in their own words.
- [Guardian Australia, "'Worldwide legacy': almost $20m raised to protect majestic tract of land in far north Queensland"](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/29/worldwide-legacy-almost-20m-raised-to-protect-majestic-tract-of-land-in-far-north-queensland) The Patagonia foundation, the anonymous $6 million, the 2024 wind farm refusal, "Nobody's looked at the invertebrates".