“That era became more scary. Bjelke Petersen brought in mandatory life imprisonment for drug offences. Not just a joint but relatively low scale dealing. As I said I’ve always loved the tropics and was only 22 and highly political and it was dangerous up there. When they brought in the life imprisonment a lot of the crazy people around me, the ones with guns kind of got this glint in their eye and were saying, ‘Well if it’s life for having a pound of dope now, you might as well shoot your way out of it and kill a cop.’ I could see the madness in their eyes and I didn’t want to be around. My Guardian Angel said…Get the f#@k out of here.
I refugeed down to Northern NSW and went to the Rainforest Information Centre and discovered intelligent hippies who were politically active. It’s been like that ever since. The Northern Rivers is my people. The tropics is still the country I love so I have to keep going back, not that I don’t love this country but I’m not a surfer. To me it’s natural to have calm water, reefs and islands and I really love humidity.
By now it’s 1987 and the plan was to buy some land with my friend Andy. I was living in a panel van and we found this place out at Toonumbar. He’s still my neighbour and we’re basically family. We didn’t have much money and we wanted to live in wilderness. To our wilderness eyes we came here and saw Camphor Laurel and Lantana from Bangalow to Lismore. We went to Kyogle Real Estate and they sent us to this bush block at Toonumbar. We stood looking over the Richmond Range and the forest and Dome Mountain. Three glossy black cockatoos flew in front of me and let out their calls and I knew that was all the message I needed. This place was deep wilderness and it was right.
We moved there in 1988 and started with three shareholders which eventually went to just Andy and I and then Andy broke away and bought his own block down the hill a bit and I ended up with the 30 acres. It’s the most beautiful hardwood forest. I have to control burn myself. The house is all built out of our own poles and our own milled timber. Because we the first to own land in our cohort, all our friends would land there and we would have an instant community with tents and tipis. We had one little shed, no water, nothing so it was real pioneering. We only had hand tools and it was a few years before we had power tools. It was extremely hard yakka. Nine years without hot water or refrigeration. It’s amazing how much you can do when you’re young.
By 1990 we got the call for the North East Forest Alliance old growth forest campaigns so we were trying to build a village but there was another forest to be saved. As a group we were off again to the Chaelundi Blockade in 1991. It was the most vigorous, passionate, incredible political forest campaign imaginable. We through everything into it and I met the most amazing people. I think activists are amazing humans. They put themselves aside and just co-operate. We had Terania and Nightcap as the early campaigns here which are significant because they were some of the earliest environmental protest campaigns of the modern era that took place through non violent civil disobedience. We also need to recognise Indigenous resistance to forest destruction which happened from first contact. We were pioneering new blockading techniques that hadn’t been seen before like vertical pipes in the ground. We had people like Dailan Pugh and John Corkill working in the courts in Sydney.
Andy, Tim and myself turned up in an old Landrover and we built the pipes into the ground. Once that forest was secured by the blockaders it was held for many months. When the Police finally came in with the cherry pickers, bulldozers, the Rescue Squads and the paddy wagons, the actual physical resistance held for 10 days straight. It was so extreme. After they finally accessed the forest and started to destroy it the court injunction came through. More or less as a result of that win in court a whole lot of melt downs flowed down the line in the NSW Parliament which ultimately led to the collapse of the Greiner Government.
When we came back to Toonumbar, basically from the network of people we had met we ended up buying a bigger slice of Toonumbar as a company and as a result of our activism became the Toonumbar National Park. So as well as having our home there we also have 600 acres nestled deep in the National Park. It’s so remote that it’s mostly forest protection and Landcare project and I have to mention Tim Somerville’s massive contribution to that.“
(to be continued)