Bruny Island

Curated by Dr Tonia Cochran and 11 others

Bruny hosts a rich human history, highly varied and exquisite natural landscapes, and is a wonderful place to find peace, solitude and to connect with wild nature.

kunanyi Sunset from Bligh Point landscape

About the region Articles about Bruny Island Conservation Things to Do Nature Community

About the region

Find peace, solitude and connect with wild nature

Located off the south-east coast of Tasmania, Australia, Bruny Island is surround by the D'Entrecasteux Channel, Storm Bay and the Southern Ocean.

Bruny Island / lunawanna-alonnah has a rich human history extending back 40,000 years, and layers of history and stories both moving, tragic and inspiring, colour its landscapes.

The island is an extraordinary microcosm of the nature of Tasmania, with grasslands, grand forests, coastal shrubs, rich and magical marine habitats and long wild stretches of coastline. Rich in birdlife, Bruny provides home to the threatened Forty-Spotted Pardalote, the Swift Parrot and the Wedge-Tailed Eagle along with important breeding sites for the short-tailed shearwater. A colony of White wallabies inhabit the southern reaches of Bruny’s Adventure Bay.

Beneath the waves of Bruny island’s varied coastline, rocky reefs and sandy gulches provide home and habitat to extraordinary sea creatures from ‘Leatherjacket’ and ‘Flathead’ fishes, to Crayfish, Little Penguins and migratory whales.

Two Tree - Point Dan Broun

Mars Bluff - Jonathan Esling

Adventure Bay - Jonathan Esling

White Wallaby "Gidday" Bruny Island Warwick Berry

White Wallaby - Warwick Berry

Adventure Bay, Bruny Island

Bligh Rocks view to Cape Queen Elizabeth, Bruny Island

Mars Bluff walk, Bruny Island

Australian Fur Seal

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Articles about Bruny Island

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Crowd-sourcing the Nature of Bruny

An exciting project to crowd-source an online field guide to Bruny Island's Natural history, stories and conservation will be launched at 12noon, Sat 14th September...

Amazing encounter with a flock of Swifties

Lyndel Wilson describes a very special encounter with a flock of critically endangered Swift Parrots

The fastest parrot on the planet

The Swift Parrot is the fastest parrot on the planet. It flies up to 88 kilometres an hour. It is also critically endangered.

Bruny Island - lunawanna-alonnah field guide

The Bruny Field guide is a special project that is ‘crowd-sourcing’ a rich, beautiful and comprehensive guide to the natural history of Bruny Island, its...

Mars Bluff Jonathan Esling

Conservation

Preserving Bruny Island for future generations

Bruny Island is home to important areas of Old Growth forests, very high biodiversity values, and provides important habitat for threatened species including the Swift Parrot, Tasmanian Wedge-tailed eagle and Forty-Spotted Pardalote. The island is home to important threatened lowland and grassy vegetation communities and is of immense cultural heritage significance, including particularly to Tasmania’s Aboriginal community.

Conservation efforts for Bruny Island include the proposal to extend formal reserves and Parks on Bruny island, the need to secure permanent protection of Bruny Island’s native forests from logging, the eradication of feral cats, better protection of Bruny Island’s extraordinarily diverse and spectacular marine environment, and improved protection and care for nature on private land.

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Conservation efforts for Bruny Island

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Bruny Island crucial for the Swift Parrot

Bruny Island is one of the most important breeding habitats for the Swift Parrot. It has the habitat that the Swift Parrots need to produce their chicks in tree hollows, and it is also free of the Sugar Glider – a key introduced predator.

Bruny Island: Critical habitat site for birds

Bruny Island is one of the most important habitat sites for a number of threatened species. It is a refuge area, like many islands around Australia and across the world. Bruny Island contains the most important breeding habitat for the Swift Parrot

Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos in the wind

Birdlife Australia: Saving Birds, Saving Life

BirdLife Australia is one of the peak bodies for birds and bird conservation across Australia. Their overarching goal is to halt the extinction crisis and recover threatened birds across Australia.

Forty Spotted Pardalote Bruny Island Kim Murray

Saving Forty Spotted Pardalote chicks from blood-sucking maggots!

A critical problem for Forty Spotted Pardalotes breeding is a native fly which lays its eggs inside their nests. When the eggs hatch, the maggots come out and burrow under the skin of the 40-Spotted Pardalote nestlings and suck their blood. But a unique conservation project might have found a solution

Why old trees are so important for endangered woodland birds

Why are old trees so important for endangered woodland birds? It takes a tree 100 years or more, generally, to start developing hollows. These hollows are critical for nest sites for these birds

8 critical challenges for saving the Swift Parrot

Do we want to have a world with Swift Parrots, or don't we? If we do, we've got to act right now because we're running out of time fast. Here are 8 critical challenges for the Swift Parrot.

Closeup of Forty Spotted Pardalote Kim Murray

A hopeful road-map for saving the Forty Spotted Pardalote

There is a lot of positive stuff and a nice road map laid out to recover the endangered Forty Spotted Pardalote, including through a project that's being run by the Bruny Island Environment Network called the Threatened Woodland Birds of Bruny Island.

Helping Forty Spotted Pardalotes nest

An extraordinary conservation project on Bruny Island is building nest boxes tailored to help one of the world's rarest birds. The project is figuring out how to let Forty-Spotted pardalotes in but keeps others out.

Things to Do

Visiting Bruny Island

Bruny Island (Nuenonne: Lunawanna-alonnah) is a critical refuge for a myriad of rare and threatened wildlife and a globally significant haven for birds.

Activities

Snorkelling and diving

Surfing

Trail Running

Sailing

Nature & Heritage

Landscape features

Wildlife

Marine life

Conservation Reserves

Heritage Sites

Villages / Towns

Explore map

Bruny Island Adventure Bay Jonathan Esling

Nature

Discover the plants and wildlife that call Bruny Island home

Bruny is home to wild beaches, rare birdlife, rugged sea-cliffs, a myriad of sea creatures, and ecosystems from kelp forests to coastal grasses and scrubland through to grand forests.

People have lived on Bruny Island for more than 40,000 years. The mighty sea-cliffs that presided over the first meetings between Europeans and the world’s oldest culture, remain much as they did more than 200 years ago - still clothed in forest, and hammered by the swells of the Southern Ocean. Seabirds that are now rare still make their homes on Bruny’s coasts.

White beaches stretch for uninterrupted miles, and the island’s convoluted coastline creates a huge diversity of marine habitats and spectacular coastal scenery. Beneath the waves, rocky reefs and sandy gulches provide home and habitat to extraordinary sea creatures from ‘Leatherjacket’ and ‘Flathead’ fishes, to Crayfish, Little Penguins and migratory whales.

Bruny Island is rich in wildlife – from being a stronghold for the Eastern Quoll, whilst also being a globally significant bird area – with many birds including the threatened Forty-Spotted Pardalote, Swift Parrot, the Tasmanian Wedge-Tailed Eagle and the exquisite Pink Robin all found on Bruny.

The nature of Bruny Island

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Forty-spotted Pardalote

One of the world's rarest birds, the Forty-Spotted Pardalote's remaining stronghold is on Bruny Island and Maria Island, off Tasmania

Pied Oystercatcher

The Pied Oystercatcher is a large wading shore-bird with a black face, back and chest, a white belly, white tail with black band at its end and a white wing-bar visible when flying. Its beak is a bright orange.

Myrtle beech

The Myrtle beech, or simply 'Myrtle' is the dominant species of Tasmania's rainforests. Myrtle trees can grow up to 55m tall, and have a heart-shaped dark green leaf with a tiny serrated edge.

Black Currawong

The currawong is a bird found only in Tasmania, frequents forests, and is a glossy all-black colour with a heavy black bill, small white tip to its tail and wingtips, and bright-yellow eyes.

Bruny Island galleries

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Bruny Island - A Photographers Paradise

Bruny Island is an island off an island surrounded by islands. Image:Nick Monk

Dark Sky Sanctuaries

The aurora australis lights the skies of Southwest Tasmania. The next Dark Sky Sanctuary? Image: Dan Broun

Bruny Island Coastline

Bruny Island has an intricate, complex, beautiful and varied coastline, ranging from sheltered inlets, shallow bays, mudflats, lagoons, and grand sea-cliffs, through to long sandy ocean facing beaches.

Bruny Island wildlife

Bruny Island is a haven for rare and unique birds and animals, and is one of the best bird-watching spots in Australia.

Community

Engage with the Bruny Island community

With a permanent population of about 600 plus a healthy community of ‘shackies’ that visit and stay on Bruny Island regularly, there is a rich nurturing community life on Bruny Island, with a proud people who have a strong sense of place and a deep love for their island.