ABSTRACT
1939 started with an immense bushfire known as Black Friday, one of the largest ever experienced in Australia (Griffiths, 2001: 129–149). Later in the year, World War Two commenced. Whilst these two events had major long-term effects on the management of Australia’s rainforests, I have chosen 1939 as a closing date for this study as it marks the end of an era in the Australian experience with rainforests. As has been detailed in this book, the period of 1870 to 1914 was one of major settler rushes to the Wet Frontier. Under the provisions of the Selection Acts, tens of thousands of people sought to make new lives for themselves through clearing the rainforests and establishing small family farms. After World War One, that vision was still there and new settlement schemes were formulated, but as the 1920s and 1930s progressed, issues of failure and abandonment loomed larger and larger.
