Qualla: Bloomfield Track https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:04 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bloomfield Track https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track Bloomfield Track: Introduction https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track/ Photo credit Felix Dance, CC BY 2.0. In December 1983, bulldozers ground their way into one of the oldest living rainforests on the planet, and people climbed the trees to stop them. They chained themselves to trunks, buried themselves to the neck in the path of the blades, and were dragged out and arrested while cameras rolled. The road they fought over is the Bloomfield Track: a narrow, lurching ribbon of red mud and steep pinches that runs north from Cape Tribulation through the heart of the Daintree. It is barely a road at all. But the fight to stop it became one of the most important conservation battles in Australian history.

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Image: Felix Dance | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/rjpm-bloomfield-track-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bloomfield Track: The Road That Shouldn't Be Easy https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track/ Photo credit Felix Dance, CC BY 2.0. Officially the Cape Tribulation–Bloomfield Road, locally just "the Track," it was punched through to link Cape Tribulation with Cooktown as a coastal alternative to the inland Mulligan Highway. The engineering tells you how unforgiving the country is. To limit the scar through th...

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Image: Felix Dance | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/rjpm-bloomfield-track-the-road-that-shouldnt-be-easy.mp3 0:06 2 full Bloomfield Track: The Blockade https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track/ Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Douglas Shire Council and the Queensland Government wanted the road built. Conservationists were appalled: a bulldozed corridor would drag development into rainforest of immense ecological value, where the forest meets the reef and lineages of plants run back tens of millions of ...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/rjpm-bloomfield-track-the-blockade.mp3 0:06 3 full Bloomfield Track: Losing the Battle, Winning the War https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track/ Photo credit dronepicr, CC BY 2.0. The blockade failed at its literal task and succeeded at something larger. The delays, the publicity, the photographs of people defending a forest with nothing but their own bodies — all of it lit a fuse under a national conversation about what Australia was bulldozing in its far...

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Image: dronepicr | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/rjpm-bloomfield-track-losing-the-battle-winning-the-war.mp3 0:06 4 full Bloomfield Track: Driving Through Living History https://qualla.com/bloomfield-track/ Photo credit Peterdownunder, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the Track is a pilgrimage as much as a drive. It crawls beneath a canopy that predates the flowering of much of the plant world, past fan palms and strangler figs and the occasional flash of a cassowary crossing the road on legs like a dinosaur's. Crossing the Bloomfield Ri...

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Image: Peterdownunder | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/p/m/bloomfield-track-wp/rjpm-bloomfield-track-driving-through-living-history.mp3 0:06 5 full