One of the brush-tailed rock-wallabies found at Chakola. Photo: Supplied.
For more than 60 years, Chakola at Kangaroo Valley has been quietly safeguarding NSW’s southernmost group of endangered brush‑tailed rock-wallabies and, for owner Nick Deacock, that legacy is both family story and lifelong responsibility.
Speaking from the 32-hectare bush property, Nick said Chakola was “an all-encompassing experience” where conservation, education and adventure had long gone hand in hand.
“The property was my parents’ vision and my dad was awarded an OAM for the conservation work he’d been doing here,” he said.
“But he was heavily involved in all sorts of different streams of adventure tourism and travel.”
In fact, Warwick Deacock did everything from contribute to the introduction of the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme in Australia to leading a private expedition to the remote subantarctic territory of Heard Island in 1964, culminating in the first ascent of Australia’s highest mountain, Big Ben.
Nick said his parents bought the land in 1963 and, three years later, were operating Chakola commercially as an environmentally sensitive creative leisure and experiential learning centre, hosting generations of school students at holiday camps, university programs, health retreats and community gatherings.
It was gazetted as a private wildlife refuge in the early 1970s and in 2007, a conservation agreement with the NSW Government, now overseen by the Biodiversity Conservation Trust (BCT), secured its future in perpetuity.
By the early 1980s, retired Royal Marine Derek Lucas, a former camp director from the 1970s, returned from England, signing what was meant to be a three‑year lease “on the back of an envelope” that ultimately stretched to 23 years.
Under Derek, the focus shifted from school camps to corporates, with companies such as McDonald’s, KFC, airport authorities and the Federal Police running team building and personal development programs.
Since the 1990s, the family has worked alongside community group, Friends of the Brush-Tailed Rock-Wallaby, to support fox control, habitat restoration and research.
Later, Conservation Volunteers Australia leased the property for about seven years.
“When my father passed away in 2017, Chakola sat here peacefully returning to nature,” he said.
Nick said he grew up regularly visiting the property, but it wasn’t until COVID lockdowns in 2020, that he began living there with his wife to “give it a new life”.
“I was running my own tour company when COVID locked everything down, and my wife and I came down here for a week, which turned into 10 days, which turned into ever since,” he said.
“But I’d been coming here since I was four, so I was very familiar with Chakola and Kangaroo Valley.
“Love and respect for the bush was instilled in us very early.”
He said they set about refurbishing and repairing buildings, bringing Chakola back from dormancy.
Although, he admits, unlike the camp’s heyday, they weren’t chasing business these days.
It’s now a low‑impact, low‑volume model: smaller numbers of visitors, and a stronger emphasis on nature, reflection and conservation.
“We do get legacy enquiries from people,” he said.
“One organisation in Brisbane brings in American college groups, because the mother came to the Chakola in 1972, and her daughter was looking for a venue for the American college groups to spend their very first week in Australia of a three-month visit.”
He said since BCT came onto the scene, they had provided opportunities and support in conservation and science collection on the property.
Recent biodiversity surveys through the BCT’s Land Libraries citizen science project recorded five more threatened species on the property, including powerful owls, large-eared pied bats, eastern coastal free-tailed bats, eastern bent wing bats and greater broad-nosed bats.
It has also identified habitat for the endangered broad-headed snake, with artificial habitat stones installed along the escarpment as homes for lizards, the snake’s primary food source.
“Chakola has always been looking at conservation and the benefit for future generations and it’s great to see multiple generations have been through Chakola over the last 60 years,” he said.
Nick said it wasn’t only about the human generations, but also generations of animals.
“It’s wonderful to see generational change there, because just a couple of hundred metres away from the buildings along the escarpment, there’s an area where you could go and you could be fairly confident of seeing a brush-tailed rock-wallaby mooching around the cliff,” he said.
“That wallaby is now quite old, and he now is seen every few days around the buildings.
“And why? Because a beautiful young male has usurped his territory, so the old fellow has moved further along and he’s quite complacently gracing the grass around the buildings.”
BCT senior ecologist Jedda Lemmon said most of the Kangaroo Valley population of brush-tailed rock-wallabies were on private property, so community support was vital for the population’s recovery.
“The rock-wallabies live around complex rocky escarpments, boulder piles and rocky outcrops just like those found at Chakola,” Jedda said.
“While numbers have fluctuated over time, two breeding colonies of about 30 to 40 adults have recovered in the region, with healthy numbers of joeys.
“These populations represent the southernmost group of the central subspecies in NSW and hold important genetic diversity.”
Chakola also hosts research projects, workshops for Landcare NSW members and cultural education programs, reinforcing its role as a living classroom.
Learn more about Chakola at Kangaroo Valley.
