5,000 Trees & One Weekend in the Daintree
Every year, supporters, volunteers, partners and staff come together to help restore rainforest in the Daintree. This year was different. For the first time, our Annual Community Tree Planting Day was held at the Daintree Oxbow, a landscape that will be the focus of restoration efforts for decades to come.
University of Sydney intern Emma Rapallini joined us for the weekend and documented her experience—from arriving in Far North Queensland for the first time to witnessing 126 people plant 5,000 trees across a former sugarcane floodplain in a single morning. What follows is Emma’s personal account of a remarkable weekend in the Daintree. Based on her observations, conversations and experiences, it captures not only the scale of the planting effort, but also the sense of community that makes restoration possible.
The crew of volunteers beginning the tree planting work on the morning of Saturday, May 16
The Tree Planting Weekend
I stepped off the plane in Cairns into a wall of warm, wet North Queensland air and immediately knew this weekend was going to be unlike anything experienced during my time studying at the University of Sydney. As an intern with Rainforest Rescue, I joined the team for their first ever Annual Community Tree Planting at the Daintree Oxbow. Once we drove north, we began to pass the previous planting sites at Nightwings: as far as I could see there was young green canopy, acres of recovered rainforest that exist only because of Rainforest Rescue’s decade of patient, persistent work. I was utterly stunned by the level of growth and the size itself of the land, how beautiful and unique it is to see physical work and conservation having grown right in front of your own eyes.
Arriving to the Daintree
Arriving in Far North Queensland ahead of the planting weekend, I was able to officially meet the entire Rainforest Rescue team — staff, board members, volunteers, and donors — gathered the evening before. At the planting mixer I was able to witness the breadth of community support behind this organisation. People had travelled from Sydney, interstate, and locally to be part of this recurring tree planting community event.
Greenery near the planting site and the spot where I met the team: Crossroads Cafe
The night before the planting, conversation flowed easily between conservation experts, ecologists, long-time local residents, and first-time volunteers — people brought together by a shared commitment to this extraordinary corner of the world. It was a preview for me of what the planting day itself would feel like: a genuine community, not just an event.
Tree Planting Day — Five Thousand Trees, a Smoking Ceremony, and my Gum boots.
Setup began at 7:00 am at 110 Cape Tribulation Road — a former sugarcane farm that Rainforest Rescue acquired less than 18 months ago with a clear intention: to restore this waterlogged floodplain to the thriving wetland it once was. Four marquees went up across the site: sign-in, insect hotel stations, a coffee stand, and a community gathering area. Before the planting began, 126 people assembled, from interstate volunteers, local residents, business partners, families, and more.
Rainforest Rescue and B-Alternative Teams setting up before the tree planting event
The arrival of volunteers and business partners to the 2026 tree planting site
Bennett Walker, a Yalanji Elder and Traditional Custodian of this country, warmly welcomed everyone to Country. He spoke of growing up running through this same land as a boy, and of his father’s country. The forest that had once been cleared was now, together with the community, beginning to be restored.
Reusable Rainforest Rescue mugs were utilized for any water and coffee, eliminating all single-use waste from the event
The smoking ceremony sent everyone safely onto the land, followed by speeches from Communications Manager Mark Cox and CEO Branden. Land manager Ari had prepared the entire site with his land management team for weeks prior to the planting. He then briefed the crowd on the day’s plan and instructions for the volunteers on how to properly plant each tree for the best chance at growth. Then the planting began — and with it, a communal focus settled over the floodplain.
The smoking ceremony welcomed each and every planter and conversations began flowing
Across the site, business partners and volunteers happily squelched through puddles and mud — with The Travel Corporation and Down Under Tours bringing the largest business contingent yet to a planting day, and B Alternative and Eco Wipes in their 7th year of planting, helping younger volunteers build insect hotels from found materials. Different logs of wood, the discarded bark of trees, and even bamboo reeds found under a local bridge. How creative! Members of the Wet Tropics Restoration Alliance, including Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation and the Wet Tropics Management Authority, worked alongside families, ecologists, and first-time volunteers (like me!).
Our young tree planters constructed their insect hotels,
along with receiving education on placement and use from our wonderful partners at B-Alternative
A local musician played drums, sang, and performed on a traditional wooden flute instrument, composing stories about the earth, and setting a fitting tune to the hum of voices planting and working together. The day was warm, the sky overcast, and across the waterlogged floodplain people moved together in quiet, purposeful effort — placing seedlings, steadying each other, smiling at strangers, hand digging holes when the prepared ones had run out, and lending a hand to strangers and friends alike.
Teamwork is the dreamwork! And look at those beautiful trees
By midday, 5,000 trees were in the ground across 1.59 hectares of Daintree floodplain — more trees, across more area, in a single session than Rainforest Rescue has ever achieved before. What an amazing record to be a part of! It appeared even the weather appreciated our work there, with not a single drop spilt over the planters during the morning – despite the previsions of rain.
Trees in the ground, planting underway, and collective focus for a collective cause
The Bigger Picture — Why This Planting Matters
This humid Saturday of May 2026 was a beginning, not a conclusion. Rainforest Rescue’s plan is to return to the Daintree Oxbow every year for the next 15 to 20 years, building on this first planting until the land becomes what it was originally meant to be: a rich and wild floodplain wetland, reconnected to the Daintree River. The goal is to restore the entire Oxbow — so that the many biodiverse communities of critters and cassowaries can once again move freely through these restored spaces.
The impact of Rainforest Rescue reaches well beyond the planting sites themselves. The local community feels it — from the families of Mossman who came out to volunteer, to conservation partners across the Wet Tropics, to the donors and businesses who shaped their year around contributing to this work. In a region where the land’s future is still contested, Rainforest Rescue is demonstrating — one season at a time, and 5,000 seedlings at a time — that restoration is both possible and worth fighting for.
Experiencing this weekend as a University of Sydney intern — watching 126 people choose to spend their Saturday in the mud, placing trees into Daintree floodplain soil — made it clear why this organisation exists and why it matters. I was struck with a strong sense of gratitude for this internship and in the vastness that is our current world, that I was able to attend and witness such a show of genuine care about the future of our environment. The rainforest does not recover on its own timeline. It recovers in collaboration with ours, through the collective effort of every person willing to show up year after year and plant.
Written by Emma Rapallini, University of Sydney Intern with Rainforest Rescue
Emma (just right of centre) with the Rainforest Rescue team © Matilda Brown
On Saturday 16 May 2026, 126 volunteers planted 5,000 trees across 1.59 hectares of the Daintree Oxbow—the largest single planting session in Rainforest Rescue’s history.
But this is only the beginning.
The Daintree Oxbow restoration is a long-term commitment that will unfold over many years, reconnecting wetlands, rainforest and river systems while creating habitat for native wildlife. To everyone who travelled, planted, supported, sponsored, volunteered, donated or simply cheered us on—thank you. Together, we’re helping write the next chapter of the Daintree Oxbow story.
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