Plant succession starts when plants such as Spinifex grass and low trees colonise the raw sand and stabilise the foredunes on the eastern beach.

On the foredunes crest, hardy trees and shrubs of Beach Sheoak, Pandanus and Coastal Banksia are a more permanent stabilising force and provide a buffer for a more complex mix of shrubs and trees behind the foredunes.

As nutrients gradually build in the sand, more complex plant communities grow. Tall forests in the high middle dunes, surround the Islands core to protect its rainforests from drying wind and salt.

Towering hardwood trees grow on the highest dunes. Their long roots reach down to rich nutrients buried deep in the sand.

Plant succession reverses on the older western dunes where the nutrient layer is leached down beyond the reach of even deep tree roots. Here the tall forests are replaced bya complex mix of swampy, treeless grassy plains fringed by paperbarks, colourful heathlands filled with sedges, wildflowers and mangroves.