Explore Ninney Rise Heritage Listed home

Ninney Rise is located north of the World Heritage listed Clump Mountain National Park where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef at Bingil Bay just north of Mission Beach. The property comprises a main residence and extensive grounds that include indigenous rain forest and a landscaped garden with swimming pool, walkways and driveways.

The house was designed and built by John Büsst around 1960, and was significant as the base from which he organised the ‘Save the Reef' and other important environmental campaigns during the 1960s and early 1970s. Ninney Rise takes in the marine environment which is now recognised for the outstanding natural universal values that John Büsst fought to protect during the 1960s before these values had been widely recognised and appreciated. Ninney Rise's park-like grounds positioned within a strikingly beautiful area of coastal lowland rainforest and the property's views to the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area had great aesthetic significance

After John Büsst had seen a advert in the Innisfail newspaper with plans to mine limestone from nearby Ellison Reef, he fought the companies plans to mine the Grear Barrier Reef & started to organised the ‘Save the Reef' environmental campaign.

Ninney Rise was a significant meeting place for the campaigners and scientists involved with Büsst in these efforts and the house became a focal point for all their struggles as it was set within the landscape that was being fought for. These included close friend Prime Minister Harold Holt, poet Judith Wright, and scientists Webb & Tracey.These deeply contentious campaigns were supported by local and international scientists and aimed to protect the Great Barrier Reef and the area's tropical rainforests from development and mining pressures

When John Büsst saved Ellison Reef from limestone mining in the Innisfail court in 1967, it set the legal precedent for protecting the whole Great Barrier Reef, including from oil drilling. The campaigns led to the declaration of the world’s largest marine park, the formation of GBRMPA, and the eventual declaration of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.

Büsst's environmental activism illustrated his transition from being an artist interested in the aesthetics of nature to a conservationist promoting the ecological reasons to conserve the natural environment

After John Büsst died in 1971, Kate Tode bought Ninney Rise. Kate than donated the property to National Parks when she died in 1990, trusting it would become a base for scientists to stay & explore the reef and rainforest and continue Büsst's work. In 2010, the place was entered on the Queensland Heritage Register.

A memorial to John Büsst near Ninney Point just north of the beach camping grounds, which has been included in the heritage entry, bears an inscription that reflects his appreciation for art, nature and conservation.

Community groups including The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation (C4), and Terrain NRM are working together to protect Ninney Rise after the property was donated to the State for conservation back in 1990, working together to make the rainforest block set by the Coral Sea into a place for science, tourism and community.