On the far north coast of New South Wales, the Big Scrub once covered about 75,000 hectares of rich basalt country. It was a lowland subtropical rainforest of figs, vines, palms and fruit doves. By the time modern conservationists took stock of it, little more than one percent remained, divided among small patches on farms, roadsides and reserves. Weeds pressed in. Cattle and clearing had done the rest.
What remained needed legal protection, science, money, landholders, seedlings and years of follow-through. It also needed someone who could make committees matter. Rainforest restoration can sound gentle, a matter of saplings and goodwill. In the Big Scrub it required persistence of a less decorative kind. Landholders had to be brought in. Government agencies had to be pressed. Botanists, bush regenerators, nursery owners, donors and volunteers had to keep working together after the first enthusiasm had passed. The work suited Tony Parkes.
Born in Hobart, he grew up close to bush and estuary. Later came science, business management and investment banking. He retired at 56 after a successful career in Sydney, and might have chosen a comfortable retirement. Instead he and his wife Rowena bought land in the Northern Rivers, learned the history of the Big Scrub and began planting rainforest on their own property.
In 1993 he helped found the Big Scrub Landcare Group, later the Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy. The group gave landholders the information and confidence to restore remnants and plant native rainforest on their own land. Parkes knew how to raise money, chair meetings, build alliances and turn concern into a program. Under his leadership the organization helped care for dozens of rainforest remnants, supported the planting of millions of trees and made restoration part of the region’s civic identity. He co-founded Rainforest Rescue and EnviTE, helped create permanent funding for Big Scrub work, and pushed for lowland subtropical rainforest to be recognized under federal law as critically endangered.
His own property became part of the evidence. He and Rowena planted tens of thousands of trees there. Over time the canopy closed, the understory thickened and birds returned. Where fragments had remained, there are now larger patches. Where resignation had settled in, there is now a method. Where a retired investment banker once seemed an improbable recruit, the forest found a man prepared to measure time in trees.
