Peter and Christine Waterhouse are the owners of The Knoll, a property located approximately 35km Northeast of Taree. The sanctuary, of which 25 hectares has been covered by a Voluntary Conservation Agreement with the NSW State Government since 2000, has a wide variety of uses ranging from being a dedicated wildlife sanctuary, used for wildlife rehabilitation, agriculture, recreation and as a residence. It is Peter and Christine’s intent to complete forest restoration on The Knoll by removing remaining weeds, while creating a network of tracks accessing various habitat types for visitors’ enjoyment, education, and to be an example of what can be done to restore valuable habitat. They would also like to increase their involvement in wildlife corridor plans.
The sanctuary covers approximately 48.8 hectares primarily made up of both dry and wet scelrophyll forest with rainforest found in gullies, as well as pasture land and a house garden. The property provides various habitat types for native wildlife and features several creek lines.
Wildlife is abundant on The Knoll and species known to occur include brush-tailed phascogales (Phascogale tapoatafa), koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), spotted-tailed quolls (Dasyurus maculatus), melomys, antechinus, grey-headed flying foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus), microbats, red-necked (Macropus rufogriseus) and swamp (Wallabia bicolor) wallabies, dingoes (Canis dingo) and lace monitors (Varanus varius), as well as various reptile and frog species.
There is huge record of bird species that have been sighted on the sanctuary which includes various owl species, nightjars, tawny frogmouths (Podargus strigoides), glossy black cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami), forest (Todiramphus macleayii) and azure (Alcedo azurea) kingfishers, regent bower birds (Sericulus chrysocephalus), a variety of pigeon species including wompoo fruit (Ptilinopus magnificus) and emerald doves (Chalcophaps indica), eastern whip birds (Psophodes olivaceus), green catbirds (Ailuroedus crassirostris) and several migrating species such as the channel-billed cuckoo (Scythrops novaehollandiae), willie wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys) and shining bronze cuckoo (Chrysococcyx lucidus).
