It will take ‘hard yakka’ and a couple of hundred years to rebuild north Queensland’s critically endangered mabi rainforest
Next to the old Eacham shire council chambers, on Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands, is a mosaic on a shop wall. One of nine made to commemorate the centenary of federation, the mosaic depicts a tropical rainforest.
The centrepiece is a giant red cedar, a tree with timber once considered so valuable it was called ‘red gold’. Two men swing axes into the trunk, exposing pale wood. Nearby, a tree kangaroo watches a felled cedar being dragged away by a bullock team.