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 – the Big Scrub, or the little that was left of the Big Scrub.
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.
Why this is important today is that Australian governments over the past 15 years have actively legislated to crush environmental activism. The protesters at Terania Creek would arguably be jailed under today’s legislation.
The spirit of dissent is under threat. That is why this story about the forest wars of 1979 needs to be told and retold. It is being forgotten as are the many brave people that took on the NSW Forestry Corporation and stood up against the logging of rare rainforest.
And this story shows just what can be done when people do stand up for what they believe in.
The blockade back in 1979 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 II. 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.
Society and post-war philosophies were being challenged.
A counter-culture in NSW exploded. 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 search of rural bliss, bought farms in the area.
There were 94 communes established back in the 1980s; 60 still exist, albeit of varying political hues.
Queensland was out of the question back then for radicals because it was a police state run by a corrupt police force and the hard right Bjelke-Petersen government. Hippies were given short shrift there.
So, the counter-culture hunkered up in Northern NSW.
There was suddenly a critical mass that was ready to stand up against environmental destruction.
This new counter-culture no longer saw nature as a resource that was there to be exploited. Instead it was seen as a living and breathing ecosystem that needed protecting and nurturing.
The scene was suddenly set for environmental action.
The fight to stop logging was seeded. No such fight had ever occurred. It was all new. The activists, loggers, and police were all confused. Blockading tactics of the activists and counter-reactions of police and loggers were all invented as the fight progressed.
The forest war in the Byron hinterland was the primary trigger to a much wider environmental movement: at the Franklin in Tasmania, in the Daintree Rainforest in North Queensland, coal seam gas blockades, and internationally.
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’.
These logging blockades gave birth to a culture of dissent in the region. This spirit of dissent was rebirthed at Bentley when the community stood up against coal seam gas exploration and now again at the Piliga Scrub where Santos is threatening to frack and extract gas.
♦ ‘Rainforest Warriors – the hippies were right’, was launched at the last Byron Writers Festival. It is for sale at bookshops in Byron, Mullum and Lismore or on rainforestwarriors.net.
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