Editor’s note: The words below by Stephen Wyatt provide an insight into his book ‘Rainforest Warriors’ and the history of the Big Scrub.
When the Northern Rivers went from rural to radical in the 1970s, the scene was set for a stoush with loggers and government to save the region’s rare and valuable rainforest.
And what a stoush it was. The forest wars broke out at Terania Creek in 1979 and Mt Nardi in 1982. The newly arrived counter-culture banded together and for the first time in Australia’s history stood up against logging.
The blockade was wildly successful. It turned Labor green and resulted in the creation of national parks right down the spine of NSW.
This environmental action would never have occurred without the extraordinary social and cultural change in the region.
The 1970s was arguably the most radical decade since World War 2. The Vietnam war – a very unpopular event – was a primary radicalising factor. But so was Apartheid in South Africa and, in Australia, 23 years of conservative government.
A counter-cultural movement exploded in Northern NSW.
There was the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin in 1973 when a few thousand half naked hippies moved in and changed the town forever, communes sprang up like magic mushrooms and the back-to-earthers, in seek of rural bliss, bought farms in the area.
The numbers were there in the Byron hinterland.
The scene was set for environmental action for decades to come: at the Franklin in Tasmania, in the Daintree Rainforest in North Queensland, coal seam gas blockades and internationally.
The rich subtropical rainforests of Northern NSW – the Big Scrub, a place of spiritual significance and sustenance for the Bundjalung people – were at the heart of these Forest Wars.
They are Gondwanan Antarctic rainforest; rare, complex and valuable.
Yet, destruction began in the 1830s. Logging, clearing and burning meant that by 1900 only 1 per cent of the Big Scrub rainforest remained – 750ha out of the original 75,000ha.
It was devastating. The Bundjalung had no say, no voice. Their country was destroyed.
But in the 1970s destruction gave way to renewal. The hippies arrived. The counter-culture surged.
The War to stop logging was seeded. It was all new to the activists, loggers and police. Blockading tactics were invented as the fight progressed.
Once the then Premier of NSW Neville Wran got the numbers in Parliament, logging was stopped.
Bob Carr said recently that the Terania and Mount Nardi blockades “… provided a political model. It was an alliance of the Labor Party and nature conservationists”.
Significantly, a new relationship between these new arrivals and the local Bundjalung people also developed. A relationship of respect.
At the Aquarius Festival, the first ever Welcome to Country was offered by indigenous Australians to the new white Australians.
The wars injected a spirit of activism into the region and that activism continues strong today.
‘Rainforest Warriors – the hippies were right’, was launched at the Byron Writers Festival on August 10. In short it is a concise social and environmental history of the Byron hinterland and is rich in historical and current photographs. It can be purchased at The Book Warehouse Lismore, The Book Room Byron Bay, The Bookshop Mullumbimby, Perceptio Nimbin, Hemp Embassy Nimbin or at www.rainforestwarriors.net.
