Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows environmental protesters and police at Terania Creek in northern New South Wales during the month-long occupation of the area in 1979. Protesters and police make their way along a forest track and the narration, by Australian actor Jack Thompson, describes the protest as the 'first all-out environmental confrontation in Australia’. Thompson outlines the achievements of the protest. Images of rainforest flora and fauna are shown and the clip closes with Jack Thompson speaking directly to the camera about Australia’s history of rainforest destruction and the necessity to protect what remains.

Educational value points

• The clip shows the Terania Creek rainforest in 1979, part of what was once the largest single area of subtropical rainforest in Australia. Terania Creek rainforest, situated north of Lismore in northern NSW, was known as the 'Big Scrub’. It stretches from the Tweed River in the north to the Richmond River in the south, an area of 750 square km. However, the forests were heavily logged for cedar and then cleared for farming land until 1979, by which time only 2 per cent of the rainforest remained.

• Environmental protesters are shown occupying the forest at Terania Creek to oppose logging in the area. Hugh and Nan Nicholson bought an abandoned dairy farm at the end of Terania Creek Road in 1974. In May 1975 they discovered that the Forestry Commission of NSW intended to log the area, so they formed the Terania Native Forest Action Group (TNFAG) to oppose the Commission’s plans. The group’s activities included alerting authorities to the fact that the Commission had failed to conduct an environmental impact study before logging the area. Two hundred people camped on the Nicholsons’ land for 30 days, peacefully disrupting the logging operation and drawing media attention to their cause.

• The Terania Creek protest was the first direct action taken in defence of a forest in Australia. The people of Terania Creek, a number of whom had moved to the region after the Aquarius festival in 1973 and settled around nearby Nimbin, were the first local residents in the history of the Australian environmental movement to place themselves between a bulldozer and a forest. The Terania Creek action was possibly the earliest successful direct action taken in defence of rainforests anywhere in the world. One of the key participants in the action was John Seed, who has since gone on to set up rainforest information centres all over the world and is prominent in the ‘deep ecology’ movement.

• The environmental cost of development was beginning to concern some Australians during the time of the Terania Creek protest. While employment and the economic benefits of logging remain central to the debate about forest policy then and now, the actions of the Terania Creek protesters elevated forest policy to a new level on the Australian political agenda. Increasing numbers of urban Australians were becoming sympathetic to the idea of protecting rainforests, thus broadening the debate across the Australian community.

• The protest was an important event in the campaign to gain World Heritage listing for the forests of central-eastern Australia. Following the successful defence of the Terania Creek rainforest and the subsequent groundswell of public opinion to protect other natural environments from destruction, the Australian East Coast Sub-tropical and Temperate Rainforest Parks were included on the World Heritage list in 1986. The 50 square km Nightcap National Park, including Terania Creek, was added to this Heritage list in 1989.

• Give Trees a Chance: The Story of Terania Creek is an example of a documentary film made to inform and mould popular opinion, and the film was a powerful medium for communicating an environmental message. The emotive title of the film is a play on the Beatles’s hit song of the time, 'Give peace a chance’. The film was shot by local filmmakers Jennie Kendall and Paul Tait, and includes footage from the 1979 Terania Creek protest and narration by Australian actor Jack Thompson.

• Australian actor Jack Thompson is featured. One of the major figures in Australian cinema, Thompson won the Australian Film Industry (AFI) award for Best Actor for Sunday Too Far Away and Petersen in 1975, and has worked on a number of films that portray country Australia, its people and the beauty of the natural environment.

This clip starts approximately 45 minutes into the documentary.

A tent-filled field is dwarfed by thick forest. Smoke billows from the makeshift settlements’ campfire. Hundreds make up a protest community that are escorted by uniformed police through a forest track. Bird calls and conversation are heard in the background. Two close-ups, one of a woodland bird, and one of rain falling on lush green vegetation. Children plant trees in the soil with their mothers. We see sunlit green ferns and palms. Jack Thompson stands in front of a wall of green plants.

Jack Thompson Terania Creek has become the first all-out environmental confrontation in Australia. The protestors came for a day and ended up staying for a month trying to save the last of the rainforest trees. Out of this protest has come an environmental inquiry, a desire for a rainforest preservation policy and serious doubt that the Forestry Commission is able to evaluate and manage the nation’s forests for our children to appreciate. Also, a desire to see the government implement a heritage policy which would protect these rare and precious environmental remnants and, as well, start a massive reforestation project which it is thought would employ approximately 5,000 people on the north coast alone. Australia has destroyed more of her rainforest than any other country in the world. There has been too much destruction. There is now an urgent need to preserve and to take great care of the few ancient, isolated pockets of rainforest that remain.