At 537,000ha, Lakefield National Park on Cape York Peninsula is Queensland’s second largest park. The park is drained by large rivers and contains spectacular wetlands and is home to waterbirds, barramundi and estuarine and freshwater crocodiles. Rivers become a series of waterholes in the dry season but the wet season transforms the park into a vast inaccessible wetland.

Lakefield has a rich and varied landscape with river estuaries, mangroves and mudflats to the north around Princess Charlotte Bay, extensive grasslands and eucalypt and paperbark woodlands on the river floodplains, and sandstone hills and escarpments to the south. Patches of the unusual Corypha utan palm grow in the grasslands on the marine plain. Gallery rainforest fringes parts of the Normanby and Kennedy Rivers. The park is a wildlife refuge and home to several rare or threatened animals including the golden-shouldered parrot, star finch, red goshawk, Lakeland Downs mouse and spectacled hare-wallaby.

Location

Lakefield is 7–8 hours north of Cairns along the Peninsula Developmental Road. Turn right to Lakefield 2km north of Laura

Further Information

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service
PO Box 15187
City East Q 4002

13 QGOV (13 74 68)