Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Hugh Nicholson’s ears pricked when he heard a truck in the nearby subtropical rainforest. It was a strange sound.
No trucks had been in this forest. Nicholson decided to investigate. It was 1974, in February, the hottest and most humid month in the Byron Bay hinterland.
Nicholson, all two metres of him, was in his short shorts, work boots and grey T-shirt. Little did he know that this day was to change the rest of his life, and the lives of thousands of others. Forest giants – figs, red cedars, white booyongs, carabeens, black beans, quangdongs and hoop pine – some hundreds of years old, soared into the sky above him.
Bangalow palms, ferns, orchids, climbing epiphytes and lilies comprised the understorey. Birdsong and cascading water in Terania Creek provided the music. It was a magic world, untouched for millions of years.
Nicholson came across the truck and three workers. They were clearing drains with pick and shovels. At the time, the area was state forest.
The workers told Nicholson that they were preparing the place for logging. This meant the harvesting of any valuable rainforest trees, then clearing and burning off the rest. The plan was to replant the area with eucalypts, which the Forestry Commission of NSW regarded as more valuable timber than the original “scrub”.
Local activists and forest saviours Hugh and Nan Nicholson. Credit: Lorrie Graham Photographer Nicholso.