Restoring Mudgeeraba Creek

When Sunparks took stewardship of Rainforest Rental Village, the corridor of land along Mudgeeraba Creek told a story of decades of abuse and neglect. The creek had become an illegal dumping ground — car bodies, motorbikes, hundreds of tyres, milk crates, building materials and shopping trolleys had accumulated over many years. We removed approximately 40 skip bins of rubbish from the creek and surrounding land before the real work could begin.

Working closely with Gold Coast City Council’s environmental officers and Watergum Community Inc — a Gold Coast-based environmental charity dedicated to on-ground habitat restoration — we undertook a comprehensive ecological rehabilitation of the entire creek corridor. This land forms part of what Gold Coast City Council identifies as the “missing middle”: a critical network of connected green corridors through the urban landscape.

Invasive species including bamboo, lantana and a range of weed trees were cleared, and in their place we planted species endemic to the area, including blue quandongs, tree ferns and lomandra — a native mat rush that stabilises creek banks and is characteristic of the subtropical riparian environment that once dominated this corridor. A significant section of the land is designated Remnant Rainforest — heavily degraded when we arrived, but now actively recovering.

The transformation has had a profound impact on local wildlife. Where ibis and magpies had been drawn in by decades of food waste — effectively crowding out native species — a targeted strategy developed with Council has reversed that dynamic entirely. The ibis have gone. Magpie numbers have returned to a single resident family. In their place, king parrots, pale-headed rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, multiple kingfisher species and lyrebirds have returned to the corridor.

Below the waterline, the results are equally striking. The creek now supports healthy populations of fish, freshwater turtles and eels — and platypus have returned to the area. Every six months, Watergum organises residents to conduct a formal platypus count, connecting the community directly to the health of the ecosystem on their doorstep.

This is what genuine environmental stewardship looks like — not a gesture, but a long-term collaboration with council, enviromentalists and community that has given a degraded urban waterway its life back.