On the far north coast of New South Wales, the old rainforest had mostly disappeared. The Big Scrub once covered about 75,000 hectares of rich basalt country, a lowland subtropical forest 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 from the edges. 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. Private 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 was local, technical and repetitive. It suited Tony Parkes.
He came to it late. 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. A private restoration project became a second public life.
In 1993 he helped found the Big Scrub Landcare Group, later the Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy. The group’s method was straightforward. It did more than gather volunteers for occasional working bees. It gave landholders the information, confidence and examples needed to restore remnants and plant native rainforest on their own land. It produced manuals, held field days, built a large annual Rainforest Day and turned scattered local concern into an institution that endured.
Parkes brought to conservation the habits of business without making the work feel managerial. He 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. He received Landcare honors, a Banksia Award and the Order of Australia. The awards mattered less than the practical change around him: a damaged landscape had acquired defenders with tools, funds and a plan.
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. The Wompoo Fruit Dove mattered to him because it was beautiful and because it performed a task, carrying fruit across the landscape. In a restored forest its presence was not decoration. It was proof that some of the old machinery of the rainforest was working again.
In his 90s, Parkes was still interested in the next problem. The conservancy moved into genetics, seed sourcing and mycorrhizal fungi, asking how restored forests could withstand inbreeding, disease, insects and a warmer climate. This was typical of him. Affection for rainforest had to be tested against evidence. Planting trees was not enough if the forest could not persist.
There was a plainness in the way he described the work. He spoke of teams, skills, funds and prospects. He knew that seedlings were uncertain things. He knew that conservation depended on landholders returning again and again to weeds, fences, grants, nurseries and weather. In the Big Scrub, the record of his life is unusually visible. Where there had been fragments, there are 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.
Banner image: Tony Parkes. Photo courtesy of Big Scrub Landcare
