Diamantina National Park is a national park in the

Channel Country The Channel Country is a region of outback Australia mostly in the state of Queensland but also in parts of South Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales. The name comes from the numerous Braided river, intertwined rivulets that cro ...

South West Queensland South West Queensland is a remote region in the Australian state of Queensland which covers . The region lies to the south of Central West Queensland and west of the Darling Downs and includes the Maranoa, Queensland, Maranoa district and parts o ...

, Australia, west of

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

. Like the

Diamantina River The Diamantina River is a major river in Central West Queensland and the far north of South Australia. The river was named by William Landsborough in 1866 for Lady Diamantina Bowen (née Roma), wife of Sir George Bowen, the first Governor of Qu ...

that flows through it, it is named for Lady

Diamantina Bowen Diamantina, Lady Bowen (; 1832/1833–1893), was a noble from the formerly Venetian Ionian Islands who became the wife of Sir George Bowen, the first Governor of Queensland. Personal life The '' Contessa'' Diamantina di Roma was born in 183 ...

, wife of Sir

George Bowen Sir George Ferguson Bowen ( zh, 寶雲; 2 November 1821 – 21 February 1899), was an Anglo-Irish author and colonial administrator whose appointments included postings to the Ionian Islands, Queensland, New Zealand, Victoria, Mauritius and H ...

, the first Governor of Queensland. Established in 1993 after the

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the state government of Queensland, Australia, a Parliament, parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Government is formed by the party or coalition that has gained a majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, ...

purchased Diamantina Lakes Station in 1992 and gazetted the property as a national park with an area of , Diamantina National Park received an award in March 2007 from the

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a Swiss-based international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the ...

(WWF) for being among the top 10 reserves of the decade. Recognition was given for the successful efforts to protect the bilby, an endangered mammal native to Australia. Livestock was removed from the park in 1998. Parts of the park contain traditional aboriginal lands. These are noted for their food resources and numerous habitation sites. Aboriginals would roam the area, moving from the

sandhill A sandhill is a type of ecological community or xeric wildfire-maintained ecosystem. It is not the same as a sand dune. It features very short fire return intervals, one to five years. Without fire, sandhills undergo ecological succession and b ...

s and

gibber A desert pavement, also called reg (in western Sahara), serir (in eastern Sahara), gibber (in Australia), or saï (in central Asia) is a desert surface covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded rock fragments of pebble and c ...

country in the wet season and returning to permanent water in the dry season. Average elevations of the terrain is 139 metres.

Birds

With

Astrebla Downs National Park Astrebla Downs is a national park in Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia. Geography Astrebla Downs is located in the Channel Country of outback Queensland, 1298 km west of Brisbane. The landscape is flat and barren with few trees. ...

, Diamantina National Park forms part of the Diamantina and Astrebla Grasslands

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

, identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

as such because it is one of few sites known for the

critically endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

night parrot The night parrot (''Pezoporus occidentalis'') is a small parrot endemic to the continent of Australia. It has also been known as porcupine parrot, nocturnal ground parakeet, midnight cockatoo, solitaire, spinifex parrot and night parakeet. It i ...

. It also supports globally important populations of the

plains-wanderer The plains-wanderer (''Pedionomus torquatus'') is an atypical species of wading bird, the only representative of family Pedionomidae and genus ''Pedionomus''. It is endemic to Australia. Its historic range included much of eastern Australia, i ...

Australian bustard The Australian bustard (''Ardeotis australis'') is a large ground-dwelling bird that is common in grassland, woodland and open agricultural country across northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It stands at about high, and its wingspan is a ...

straw-necked ibis The straw-necked ibis (''Threskiornis spinicollis'') is a bird of the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae. It can be found throughout Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Indonesia. Adults have distinctive straw-like feathers on their neck ...

white-necked heron The white-necked heron or Pacific heron (''Ardea pacifica'') is a species of heron that is found on most of the Australian continent wherever freshwater habitats exist. It is also found in parts of Indonesia and New Guinea, but is uncommon in Ta ...

inland dotterel The inland dotterel (''Peltohyas australis'') is an Endemism, endemic bird of the arid Australian interior. It forms loose flocks in sparsely vegetated Desert pavement, gibber plain and claypans in the day where it loafs in the shade and eats sho ...

Bourke's parrot Bourke's parrot (''Neopsephotus bourkii'', formerly known as ''Neophema bourkii''), also known as the blue-vented parrot, sundown parrot, pink-bellied parrot, Bourke's parakeet, Bourke or "Bourkie", is a small parrot found in Australia and the mon ...

black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

and

pied honeyeater The pied honeyeater (''Certhionyx variegatus'') is a species of bird in the family of honeyeaters Meliphagidae and the sole species in the genus ''Certhionyx'' (Christidis & Boles 2008). This species is also known as the black and white honeyeate ...

s, gibberbird, Hall's babbler,

chestnut-breasted quail-thrush The chestnut-breasted quail-thrush (''Cinclosoma castaneothorax'') is a small endemic Australian bird which is predominantly found within the semi-arid deserts of New South Wales and Queensland. Distribution The chestnut-breasted quail-thrush ...

cinnamon quail-thrush The cinnamon quail-thrush (''Cinclosoma cinnamomeum'') is a small to medium-sized species of bird that is endemic to Australia. This bird is found in the arid and semi-arid regions of central Australia. Taxonomy This species is a member of the ...

and

spinifexbird The spinifexbird (''Poodytes carteri'') is endemic to inland Australia. Also known as Carter's desertbird, it is named after Thomas Carter, an English ornithologist and pastoralist active in Western Australia from 1887 to 1928. Description It h ...

. In 2016, a population of the critically endangered

was discovered in the park. The parrot is Australia's rarest bird species. This discovery significantly expanded the known range and is the largest known population of the species.

Notes

National parks of Queensland Protected areas established in 1993 1993 establishments in Australia Important Bird Areas of Queensland South West Queensland Shire of Diamantina Diamantina Lakes, Queensland {{Queensland-national-park-stub

Birds

See also

Notes