Booderee National Park news
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'Booderee' is an Aboriginal word from the Dhurga language meaning 'bay of plenty' or 'plenty of fish'. Booderee is owned by the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community and has always been a significant place for Koori people. It has provided sustenance and shelter for its Indigenous inhabitants over hundreds of generations.
Autumn school holiday activities at Booderee National Park
Come and join us in the park for an exciting range of activities such as taking a stroll with a traditional owner and learning about medicines, edible plants, tools and technology or venturing into the marine world on our big screen.
Download the Autumn school holidays program (PDF - 90KB)
Neville Hampton, Darren Sturgeon, Rachel McLeod, Anthony Roberts Junior, Donna McLeod and Bernie McLeod with the best Indigenous Tourism Award.
Booderee National Park offers the best Indigenous tourism experience in Australia
February 2010
It's official! Booderee National Park offers the best Indigenous tourism experience in Australia.
The park has taken top prize in the Indigenous tourism experience category at the National 2009 Qantas Australian Tourism Awards in Hobart. The judges also highly commended the park in the best tourism attraction category.
The park achieves all this through successful joint management between its traditional owners, the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community and the Australian Government. Traditional owner and botanic gardens curator Bernie McLeod accepted the award on behalf of the Wreck Bay community and the park.
"This is just so exciting - I think the community is really going to benefit from this," he said. "Winning awards like this is a great achievement. Everyone has been involved - the Wreck Bay community, our families and park staff, everyone worked towards this.
More than half of Booderee's staff are Indigenous. They manage Australia's only Aboriginal-owned botanic gardens and work in every area of the park, from park rangers to visitor guides.
Media release >>
The new steps to Steamers Beach
Summer school holiday activities at Booderee
Decembe 2009/January 2010
Our school holiday activites are now online. Get yours here (PDF 126KB)
Steamers track steps - opening December 17
December 2009
New steps have been constructed to enable safer access to Steamers Beach. The aluminum stairs and balustrade were fabricated in a modular fashion to allow the WEBL crew to carry the pieces to the site manually either down the steep track or by boat!
Booderee wins two top tourism awards
November 2009
Latest news – Booderee National Park has won two 2009 NSW Tourism awards - best attraction and best Indigenous tourism.
Steamers Track & Car Park will be closed from Friday 20th for 3 weeks
Friday 20 November 2009
New steps are to be installed at the base of the Steamers Walking Track to provide safe access to the beach across some dangerous rocks.
Booderee's maritime mystery
October 2009
A nineteenth century gravestone and some unidentified tiles could hold keys to Booderee's maritime past. Martin Fortescue (now acting Park Manager) found the gravestone near Cave Beach back in the 1970s. Park staff have also found tiles at Wreck Bay from what was believed to be the wreck of the Corangamite, which ran aground in 1886. Many believe the tiles could be much older.
Now a maritime archaeologist from the NSW Department of Planning is researching Wreck Bay's shipwrecks and maritime history, including the wreck of the famous convict ship Hive on Bherwerre Beach.
The Hive was one of only three convict ships lost in Australian waters. It sank in December 1835 - but thanks to a rescue effort from the Wreck Bay community all but one of more than 300 passengers managed to survive the wreck.
A fox caught red-footed on stealth camera
Keeping foxes on the run
October 2009
Booderee is celebrating 10 years of fox management this month - but the park's not stopping there! The park is again adopting the latest technology to continue its successful multi-agency, regional team approach around Jervis Bay and the Greater Shoalhaven area.
The team is now using fauna stealth cameras. The cameras are used as a monitoring tool in areas of the park where the team hopes to reintroduce locally extinct fauna such as the long-nosed potoroo.