Rachel Sanderson examines the controversy that erupted in 1983 over the construction of a 33-kilometre road through one of the last extensive lowland tropical rainforests in Australia
On Sunday, 7 October 1984, the Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield road was officially opened. After a prayer calling for an end to the divisions caused by the road, and asking that the fears of its opponents not be realised, a motorcade of around 60 four-wheel drive vehicles set out triumphantly. Taking part were Queensland Minister for Environment Martin Tenni, Douglas Shire Council (DSC) Chairman Tony Mijo, and a busload of senior citizens from Mossman. Rain began to fall and, very rapidly, the vehicles became bogged. Tenni was flown out by a State Emergency Service (SES) helicopter; Mijo was towed out by a six-wheel drive bulldozer. Someone hot-wired a council dozer to pull out the bus. Workers were still struggling to remove vehicles the following day. As local conservationist Antony ‘Tiny’ Toohey wrote: ‘So the good Lord gave us a laugh as a final act’. The farcical opening of the road may have provided some sense of poetic justice to its opponents, but it also represented a battle lost. Ironically, the construction of the road helped to build the momentum that led, in 1988, to the World Heritage listing of a much larger area of North Queensland’s Wet Tropics. The dispute over the construction of a 33-kilometre road through one of the last extensive lowland tropical rainforests in Australia was, and remains, important to many different people for a range of reasons. The intensity of the controversy changed the lives of those involved. The campaign against the road not only forged connections but also revealed tensions between individual conservationists and green organisations around Australia. It divided local communities. Those who supported the road saw it as an important link to the isolated Aboriginal settlement at Bloomfield River—the inhabitants of which were largely in favour of it. To many locals, it was a continuation of the endeavours of the pioneers of the North. Those who opposed it saw it as an act of vandalism. They believed that the construction of the road was directly linked to the further sale and development of freehold rainforest lands north of the Daintree River.
During my time at the National Library, I examined a range of collections for what they revealed about the people and organisations that were drawn into the Daintree road dispute, and the tensions involved in the transition of a conservation issue from the local to the national and international arena. Local conservationists
began their blockade of the construction site on 30 November 1983, when
the bulldozers crossed the Daintree River. They hoped to slow the dozers’
progress and allow the Federal Government time to intervene. Many of those
involved had never taken part in such an action before; according to the
local Douglas Shire Wilderness Action Group (DSWAG), at the first blockade
meeting they ‘felt small in numbers, helpless and green’. They hoped that
support from the South would soon arrive. The confrontation between protesters
and bulldozers took place in two stages: the first blockade lasted from
In an oral history interview conducted by Gregg Borschmann as part of the National Library’s ‘My Country—A Living History of the Australian Landscape’ oral history project, Peter Stanton described the day on which he was sent to the site where construction of the road was to commence as the blackest day of his life. As the National Parks and Wildlife officer responsible for the Cape Tribulation National Park, Stanton was required to read out a proclamation declaring the park closed before the bulldozers could begin work. He believed that the proposed road was not actually legal, because it did not follow the path that had been gazetted when the park was created in 1981. However, he was instructed by Dr Saunders, Director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) that the road should go ahead. When Stanton arrived on site, he found that the road’s route was being determined from the seat of the bulldozer. The Douglas Shire Council clerk and engineer were not willing to survey the road, because that would make it easier for the blockaders to stop the bulldozers. Peter Stanton was not willing to make the proclamation until he was convinced that the road could, in fact, be built. After several days, Stanton received instructions from Dr Saunders that authorisation must be given immediately. In the interview Stanton recalls:
He compares watching the bulldozers entering the park to watching an execution. Having delayed the progress on the road, Stanton was seen as taking the side of the blockaders. He was ordered to leave the park and was suspended from his position for three months. He remembers the period with sadness and with bitterness.
With no political solution imminent, the tactics of the blockaders became more extreme. From standing in front of bulldozers, some moved to burying themselves up to their necks, or chaining themselves high in trees along the proposed route, sometimes staying there for days. Even an hour’s delay of the bulldozers was considered a minor victory. The records of Antony Toohey, who became chairman of DSWAG, include a series of letters in which he offers his recollections of the first blockade in particular. These reminiscences are personal and engaging, and show that, even 10 years on, the feelings associated with the failure of the campaign remain fresh. Toohey’s records also include a radio log which provides virtually a minute-by-minute account of events at the second blockade, giving a sense of the drama and urgency felt by those involved. A radio link-up was maintained from the blockade sites to a home base near Cairns, a feat not matched by police or council workers. At times blockaders, including a tree-sitter, were connected via the radio to the press in Brisbane and also interstate. Although the first blockade began as a local affair, the second was swollen by interstate supporters. Instead of the relatively friendly country cops who were present initially, the ‘dog squad’ was sent up from, as Toohey described it, ‘the dark alleys of Brisbane’. During the first blockade, Toohey recalled that DSWAG bought white shirts from an op-shop for their spokesman, Mike Berwick, and gave him a ‘council haircut’. By August 1984, more radical campaigners (with experience in direct action from the Franklin River, East Gippsland and Roxby Downs) had become involved. Far from attempting to appear conservative and unthreatening, the Nomadic Action Group matched many of the negative stereotypes of environmentalists held by locals. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) quickly took on the role of coordinating the national campaign to oppose the road. The ACF maintained a project officer in Cairns and utilised their public prominence to lobby politicians, putting particular pressure on Federal Environment Minister Barry Cohen. When the Daintree issue broke in late 1983, environmentalists were fresh from the win over the damming of the Franklin River in Tasmania, in which the Federal Government intervened. In Queensland, however, the popularity and political skills of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen made the battle less appealing. As Bjelke-Petersen himself put it, ‘They tried to get Canberra involved but Canberra wasn’t game’.
While the ACF’s efforts were vital in taking the Daintree issue onto a national and international stage, this process also undermined locally the credibility of the blockade. Accusations were made that the ACF was paying people to protest, and those who made the long journey north were seen by the local council as ‘Johnny-come-latelies’, who should have no say in the ‘development’ of the shire. The records of the ACF reveal that the organisation was aware of this problem, and that a decision was made to portray the blockade as a primarily local protest. This proved increasingly difficult as local conservationists requested outside help and the ACF invoked international treaties, also calling on international figures such as naturalist David Attenborough to offer public support for their campaign. The Daintree blockade was not just a physical confrontation, but also a philosophical one. It was the head-on meeting of two very different views of the nature and value of North Queensland. One upheld a pioneering ethos: the construction of the road was an inevitable element in the development and progress of the North. This was a view that held—and still holds—strong historical resonances. Roads and trails have played a very significant practical and symbolic role in North Queensland’s history, particularly in otherwise impenetrable rainforest areas. The other view saw the Daintree River as the place where the line should be drawn and beyond which the rainforest should be left undisturbed. The conservationists’ position rested on a vision of the rainforest as a wilderness of intrinsic and universal value, not as a local resource. In the words of DSWAG:
Those who buried themselves in the ground or chained themselves high in the branches of trees in front of the bulldozers identified their wellbeing with the wellbeing of the rainforest in a very direct and physical way. While they lost the battle for the road, Antony Toohey believed that, with the World Heritage listing of the Wet Tropics in 1988, they won the war. RACHEL SANDERSON is a PhD candidate at JamesCook University, Townsville |
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