The local National Tree Day event is taking place on Sunday 2 August and the planting site is the Crystal Castle at 81 Monet Drive, Montecollum, near Mullumbimby. Activities start from 10 am and all residents are invited to volunteer for a few hours by planting, watering and mulching the plants.

“We held our first National Tree Day event in 1999 and since then we’ve planted over 100,000 trees”. said Kelvin Davies of Rainforest Rescue. The trees have been planted on farms and rural properties and also in partnership with other community groups in and around Byron Bay and Mullumbimby.

“Three years ago we decided to establish a demonstration site at the Crystal Castle as many of the other planting sites are inaccessible. From what was an impenetrable wall of weeds we now have a beautiful rainforest walk with over 5,000 local rainforest plants. The design of the planting aims to showcase the hundreds of different plants found in our local rainforest. We’ve planted lots of trees, some of which are now 6 metres tall and we’ve also planted the palms, ferns, and lilies and other smaller rainforest understorey plants.

“We wanted people to be able to visit the work we are doing to re-establish rainforest in the region, however these days insurance is always a consideration for projects. That’s why it’s been great to have the site at the Crystal Castle as they accept responsibility for visitor safety”. said Kelvin. The Crystal Castle and their staff have built a walking track, removed hazards, erected interpretative signage and will maintain the trees into the future.

Lowland subtropical rainforest, once extensively found in the northern NSW region was almost all cleared and now only 1% remains. Rainforest Rescue’s Plant a Rainforest Project is supported by businesses and individuals who sponsor the planting of the trees. For more information phone 6684 4360 or visit www.rainforestrescue.org.au

The sweat! The sun! The bugs! But the trees, my goodness, the trees! Tree planting isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

This June, my partner Jon and I had the opportunity to do some re-generation work in the Daintree for Rainforest Rescue. We worked alongside David Cook, the Daintree Conservation Project Officer (a lovely man), as well as Conservation Volunteers Australia (a diverse group of eager planters) as we planted 4,000 trees over two weeks. We planted two sites: one of which was a residential property that had been bought back by the Queensland Government; the other site was a privately owned and inhabited site that was mostly covered in Guinea Grass, a weed which the owner was more than happy to replace with rainforest trees.

There were many different native species of trees that we planted on each property, inter-mingling them all to try and re-create the biodiversity already found in untouched areas of the Daintree. The trees were just seedlings, “babies” as David Cook calls them, and each one needed to be planted with care. The gentler you are with the trees the more likely they are to survive, so we did our best to nurture the seedlings as they were introduced to their new homes.

The trees may be small when they start out, but they do grow quickly in the tropical climate. We visited sites that Rainforest Rescue planted over a year ago, and the progress is amazing. The best part is: the trees aren’t going anywhere. Ever. I only wish I could live for a few hundred years so I could see these re-generated areas turn into the lush rainforest areas that surround them; filled with all kinds of wildlife. On one of the sites we were lucky enough to see a male cassowary and his two babies one morning as they poked around the newly planted trees finding fallen cassowary plums to munch on. If I come back as a cassowary in my next life, I know I will most definitely make my home amongst some of the trees that we’ve planted.

As a couple of city folk who walked into the Plant a Rainforest Project without too much tree experience, we feel really proud and excited about what we were able to accomplish in two weeks. The entire project is so simple and effective and it’s run by a great group of dedicated and passionate people. Time and money raised by Rainforest Rescue is directly translated into putting trees in the ground—ground that really needs trees. It doesn’t get much more simple than that.