Everlasting Swamp National Park is a rare coastal wetland north of Grafton in the Clarence Valley. A hotspot for bird watching, you can explore the park and its wildlife from your canoe or bike. Known to bird watchers as the ‘Kakadu of the south’, Everlasting Swamp National Park is one of the largest freshwater wetlands on the NSW North Coast and protects 26 threatened species.Take your binoculars because this park is superb for bird watching—especially after heavy rain when high water levels attract birdlife. You’ll be thrilled to discover rare birds and even glimpse their courtship dances. Keep an eye out for black-necked storks in their huge stick nests, elegant brolgas bobbing and strutting with life-long mates, and black swans escorting their downy cygnets through the wetlands.Jump in your canoe or kayak to paddle the meandering creeks lined with reeds and giant waterlilies. Bring your fishing rod to cast a line for bass and mullet in Sportmans Creek or explore its wooded creek banks by bike. If you’ve come to relax away from the crowds, picnic on the grass beneath the shade of old red gum trees as frogs croak and birds of prey circle overhead.

Vast, forested and always wet, Everlasting Swamp was so-named in the 1800s by European Australians who came for easy game. In Sportsmans Creek they caught huge fish and shot birds in disturbingly large numbers. From 1910, landholders worked to tame the wetland’s extremes. They cleared forest, built weirs to prevent natural inflows of salty water at high tide and built drains to turn the swamp into pasture land. Part of Everlasting Swamp’s heritage, you can still see some of these structures today.

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