The Barrington Coast sits at a genuinely unusual crossing point, the southern edge of range for some species, the northern edge for others, which means the biodiversity here isn’t just abundant, it’s a little unexpected. A few residents worth knowing before you go looking for them.

Tasmanian devils, on the mainland

The world’s largest surviving marsupial carnivore hasn’t lived wild on the Australian mainland for around 3,000 years, wiped out by dingo predation long before European settlement. Yet at Aussie Ark’s conservation facility in Barrington Tops, in an environment similar enough to Tasmania to fool them, devils are being bred as part of a genuine rewilding effort. Despite the growling and the reputation, they’re scavengers rather than predators, unfairly targeted by Tasmanian farmers in the 1800s who blamed them for livestock losses that likely weren’t their doing.

This is the only place on the Australian mainland where you can get up close and personal to these iconic animals.

I’ve had two encounters there I still think about. The first was cuddling a devil joey, an experience that rearranges your assumptions about an animal known mostly for its snarl. The second was watching a feeding session with the adults, all growls and the unmistakable crunch of bone, properly primal stuff, when one particularly curious devil wandered over and started sniffing around me, for all the world like one of my own mini schnauzers saying hello. Not something I expected from an animal with that reputation.

The Manning River turtle

Found nowhere else on earth except the middle and upper reaches of the Manning River, this freshwater turtle with distinctive yellow markings is listed as endangered and can live up to 20 years. Aussie Ark, hidden high in Barrington Tops, runs an insurance population to help secure its future, and in 2022 returned ten turtles to the Manning River that had been rescued from the 2019 bushfires while still in the egg.

Species at the edge of their range

Barrington Tops holds World Heritage status as a relic of Earth’s primordial Gondwana history, and its position means plant and animal species reach either their northernmost or southernmost limits here. Altitude does a lot of that work, Barrington Tops is the highest point you can drive to on the Australian mainland outside the Snowy Mountains, and that height creates genuinely subalpine conditions this far north, cool temperate pockets that species from much further south have quietly held onto.

The result is an unusual mix in one place, the spotted-tailed quoll, Australia’s largest mainland marsupial carnivore, the long-nosed potoroo, and the broad-toothed rat all turning up alongside more expected coastal wildlife.

Gould’s petrel, Australia’s rarest seabird, breeds almost nowhere else, 95 percent of the entire species nests on the islands around Port Stephens, within Myall Lakes National Park’s own island reserves.

The everyday oddities

Not everything remarkable here is rare. Platypus can be spotted at twilight on rivers right across the region, the Barrington, Gloucester, Manning and more, if you’re patient and quiet enough. Wingham Brush Nature Reserve hosts a full colony of grey-headed flying foxes, Australia’s only flying mammal.

And somewhere in the forest at the Firs Picnic Area in Barrington Tops lives a superb lyrebird with a party trick, he’s been heard mimicking a motorcycle engine, one of up to 25 different calls he can string together to attract a mate.

Nature here is wild, unpredictable and always changing, wildlife sightings are never guaranteed and conditions can shift with the seasons, so treat every encounter as the genuine privilege it is, and always keep a respectful distance.