Replanting the Daintree
Traditional Land Owners are working with non-indigenous Australians in far north Queensland to return the Daintree rainforest to its natural habitat.
By Sean Davey
Photographs by Kenton/Davey (Oculi)
As Andrew John Solomon looks up at the rainforest canopy on Kuku Yalanji land near Cape Tribulation in Far North Queensland, his eyes start to water.
‘When I first came back, I felt someone was following me. I could feel a presence. I wasn’t wearing any shoes and all of a sudden I felt a bolt of electricity come up through me from the ground. It was Country speaking to me, it was welcoming me back.’
Solomon is a traditional owner of Kuku Yalanji land in the Daintree Rainforest, in Far North Queensland. Celebrated as one of the the oldest rainforests in the world, the Daintree is located in Cape York on the northern peninsula of Australia, and is a designated World Heritage area.
In the 1980’s, parts of the Daintree Rainforest were subdivided, with over one thousand lots allocated for private sale and development. Thirty-five years on however, without basic infrastructure like mains power or water, life in this remote part of Far North Queensland can be equally harsh as it is beautiful for those who dreamed of a life in the rainforest.
On the First of May this year, Solomon performed a special Welcome to Country ceremony on what has long been known as ‘Lot 46’, a freehold, 28 hectare block of land north of the Daintree River. The ceremony marked the end of a ten-year revegetation program that Rainforest Rescue, a non-profit environmental organisation, undertook to bring the block of land back to its pristine natural state.
‘Our Mother Earth is a spirit too and we learn to connect with it. She wants to look after us, but we need to look after her too’ says Solomon.
After Solomon’s Smoking Ceremony, Lot 46 was renamed ‘Kurranji Bubu’, Cassowary Land in Yalanji language.
Founded in 1998, Rainforest Rescue’s mission, like other organisations who work in the same space, is to buy back blocks of land in the Daintree and, in partnership with local indigenous people, regenerate them into natural rainforest habitat.
Rainforest Rescue’s CEO Branden Barber says that working with indigenous traditional owners is paramount to the organisation’s success.
‘We continue to ask questions (of traditional owners) about the types of ecosystems that have existed in different parts of the rainforest, and that has adapted our planting priorities. It all comes down to respect.
‘This is not our land. I’m not a big person for private ownership, I never have been. It’s actually a funny thing to be considered one of the largest landowners in the Daintree.
‘We’re never going to do anything with this land’, says Barber, ‘and there is a natural bridge with the traditional owners because of our intentions. We both come come from a shared place of gratitude and the local indigenous people know that we are not going to exploit the land.’
There are tremendous environmental benefits to the revegetation of rainforest ecosystems, especially with regards to the unique location of the Daintree and it’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.
’One of the contributions we make is to restore land, restoring soil and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere’, says Barber.
To date Rainforest Rescue has purchased 35 properties in the Daintree, some of which have been cleaned, cleared and revegetated, others were already intact rainforest habitats.
‘Stay tuned’ says Barber with a smile, ‘it’s soon to be 36.’
Non-indigenous land owners who share a desire to revegetate their land to rainforest ecosystems are also involved. Annie Schoenberger’s property Night Wings sits on Eastern Kuku Yalanji land, south of the Daintree River.
‘I bought this land in 2014 and started reforestation in 2015. It was a plan from the beginning to do reforestation and since then we have planted 70,000 trees.’
Schoenberger has been working with Rainforest Rescue to restore her property to its original rainforest habitat, and every year they have held tree planting days on her farm. Last year’s event was cancelled due to Covid-19, but this year, in late April, over one hundred people turned up to help plant trees; 3,000 were planted on that day.
Julaywarra elder Bennett Walker, a traditional owner, has been working with Schoenberger to revegetate her property.
‘When I heard that Annie was going to replant in this place here, because it’s in our country, I thought it was a good chance to do something.’
‘Even I grew up here cutting cane here when I was 16, 17 years old. But being young, I didn’t know what it was doing to the environment.’
Walker remembers the landscape before it was proliferated with sugarcane farms.
‘When we were living in the mission back then, this was all bush and scrub. To get from Daintree to Mossman was just a little track, but because we were in the mission, we weren’t allowed to travel out of there, we were restricted.
‘All our animals were disappearing, being pushed back. But since we started doing this we can now see the cassowaries, frogs and things like that coming back into this area. And that, for me is something for my grandchildren to see. They would have missed out on that part of our history if it weren’t for this.’
It’s not only the returning of natural fauna and flora that is of concern to Walker. When asked if it’s possible for sugarcane farming and the rainforest to coexist, he pauses for a moment to think.
‘I suppose it could, but as I’m getting older, my people, my people, have been affected by diabetes. Sugar is a real problem in my community. Both my wife and I are diabetics and we don’t touch sugar anymore.’
Walker points to the mountains of national park that borders the property.
‘This is what it was, and how it should be, like that section up there.’
