Paradise Preserved : A History of Forestry on Fraser IslandFriday 21 Nov 2025
Paradise Preserved: A history of forestry on Fraser Island, by retired forester Robert Onfray, presents over a century of documented evidence that challenges the dominant narrative about the world's largest sand island. "The forests that tourists admire today were shaped by 120 years of professional management, not left untouched," says Onfray, who spent over 40 years in forestry across Queensland, New South Wales, and Tasmania. "Yet this history is being deliberately erased." The 366-page book draws on extensive archival research, historical photographs, and interviews with forestry workers and their families to document Fraser Island's timber industry from the 1860s to the cessation of logging in 1991. But Onfray's work goes beyond history. With catastrophic bushfires increasingly linked to fuel load buildup from fire suppression policies, the book's findings have urgent contemporary relevance. "We're seeing the results of hands-off management across Australian forests – more intense fires, invasive species takeovers, and ecosystem decline," Onfray explains. "Fraser Island demonstrates that active, science-based management produced healthier forests than ideological preservation." The book documents sustained yield practices, forest regeneration data, and silvicultural techniques that maintained productive forests while preserving biodiversity. It also examines current management challenges, including fire mismanagement, tourism impacts, and problematic policies regarding dingoes. "As fire historian Stephen Pyne wrote: 'What thrives on disturbance dies in its absence,'" Onfray notes. "Australian eucalypt forests are fire creatures. The evidence from Fraser Island proves this." Onfray worked on Fraser Island as a forestry student in the 1980s, experiencing firsthand the remote areas few visitors ever see. His research includes access to William Pettigrew's diaries, the Queensland State Archives, and the McKenzie family photo collection, which documents early 20th-century operations.  At the Brisbane launch of Paradise Preserved, from left, David Anderson, journalist and son of Fraser Is district forester Andy Anderson, John Huth, forestry historian, author Robert Onfray, Gail Stockwell, daughter of forest ranger Dick Stockwell, Mike Anderson, Queensland forester, and Dr Gary Bacon, AM, professional forester. The book features a foreword by renowned mountaineer and forestry advocate Tim Macartney-Snape OAM, who climbed Mt Everest from sea level to summit and studied at ANU. Paradise Preserved is published by Connor Court Publishing (ISBN: 9781923568051) and includes historical photographs, original maps of tramlines and logging areas, and comprehensive technical appendices. The book can be purchased at this link - Paradise Preserved : A History of Forestry on Fraser Island Source & image credit: Robert Onfray | ||
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