Purga Creek

Information from  City of Ipswich Waterway Health Strategy, 2020

Purga Creek is a major tributary of Warrill Creek, joining the waterway approximately 3km upstream of the Bremer River and Warrill Creek confluence. The Purga Creek sub-catchment encompasses the Peak Crossing and Purga townships and has a total area of 227km2. About half the sub-catchment is within the Ipswich LGA with the remaining upper catchment within the Scenic Rim Regional Council area.

Farming communities were established in the catchment in the 1850s, with large grazing runs established and vegetation cleared on a significant scale in the 1860s. Agriculture is still the predominant land use within the Purga Creek sub-catchment, with mostly irrigated horticulture on the floodplains and grazing on the hillslopes.

The sub-catchment contains the Flinders-Goolman Conservation Estate which forms part of the largest remaining tract of lowland eucalyptus forest in South-East Queensland. The sub-catchment also contains mapped endangered ecological communities. There are a number of private properties with conservation partnerships or agreements across the sub-catchment.

Special features of the catchment include:

• Flinders-Karawatha regional corridor
• Priority area for rehabilitation and protection of Koala habitat
• Active rural community
• Sites of cultural significance (Purga Aboriginal Cemetery and Purga United Church)
• Home to threatened ecological community Swamp Tea-tree (Melaleuca irbyana) which is listed as critically endangered in the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999.
• Flinders-Goolman Conversation Estate