Doing what you know is right
Dailan Pugh
Locked onto logging machinery in Gibberagee State Forest in 2019.
Dailan Pugh fell in love with the rainforests of Northern NSW over four decades ago. He dreamt of a solitary, off-the-grid life in the bush. A gifted artist, he hoped to use his art to capture and share nature’s beauty. But the rainforests were being logged. Dailon abandoned his dreams and stood up to fight.
This is a story for anyone needing the courage to do what they know is right, regardless of the personal cost.
THE NOMINATION
I asked ecological scientist and forest activist Mark Graham whose courage has most inspired him. He is quick to name Dailan Pugh, the granddaddy of forest activism in northern NSW.
I’ve always been in awe of Dailan. He gives his life for the greater good and always has. He got an Order of Australia medal for his services to forest conservation. He’s just a giant of a man.
His father was Clifton Pugh, a very famous artist in the Heidelberg School and he grew up in a bohemian artist camp around Melbourne. Beatnik stuff: berets and goatees.
Dailan’s own art is truly magnificent. These days I get emails from him at strange times because he’s trying to balance his life by doing art in the daytime and activism and advocacy at night.
Dailan moved up to the north coast about the time I was born, and I first met him in 1992, when I was 16 and at Jetty High. He was running the (anti-logging) Chaelundi Blockade and I went there with my father. That Chaelundi blockade: It was cold. It was wet. It was remote. It went for months into years. And he just kept at it. And the area that was blockaded was eventually protected.
Dailan addresses blockaders at Chaelundi State Forest in 1991.
Through the 90s I watched his ongoing advocacy for a million hectares of forest in northern New South Wales, which ultimately culminated in the Regional Forest Agreement.
In those times I watched Dailan in the media and attended some of the blockades where he was involved. I’m very honoured and humbled to have his friendship now. There’s a certain aloofness, even gruffness to him, but I’m still in awe of him.
He just keeps on going. He doesn’t stop.
There’s a stamina, a tenacity, an indefatigable drive. He started doing this stuff about the time I was born, and now he’s got at least a few grandkids. He’s put up with so much crap over so long. A lot of the challenges are in the human space: characters and people and egos and agendas. And he just keeps on keeping on. He doesn’t stop.
To me, courage means strength, resilience, and fortitude in the face of adversity. No matter what, you’re forging toward a better endpoint. And I just see that in Dailan, hands down.
DAILAN
I fell in love with the rainforest. So vibrant and alive: all these different plants doing all these weird and wonderful things. In my twenties, I moved up to the north coast of NSW to live near rainforest.
Initially, I lived in Terania Creek Valley and there was a stand of rainforest and old-growth eucalypts that the locals were trying to protect. I spent time there and got to appreciate it. Then in 1979, there was a blockade. By that time, I’d moved to Cawongla and was running a general store. I closed the store and went down to the action at Terania Creek, and I was arrested there. There was a long, convoluted process, but in the end, Terania Creek was saved.
One of Dailan’s early drawings, expressing his marvel at the majesty and vibrance of the rainforests.
The wins keep you going and inspire you to do more. There were a number of areas where people were trying to protect the rainforest. Given that the rainforest was the love of my life, I got involved in those campaigns as well.
And then in 1982 there was the Rainforest Decision to protect 120,000 hectares of some of the best remaining stands of rainforest in NSW. So that was a victory.
My aim, at that time in my life, was to build a house in the middle of nowhere, be near rainforest, grow my own veggies and live a self-sufficient life. But they were still logging the rainforest and you can’t ignore that. Well, I suppose you could just live your own life and ignore it all, but I couldn’t.
They were still logging the rainforest and you can’t ignore that.
I got involved with protecting the western Border Ranges, which had a large area of rainforest. Because of the 1982 Rainforest Decision, the government and the conservation groups in Sydney thought we’d already saved the rainforest. Here I was trying to protect rainforest when everyone said the job had been done. But the government’s intent was to go on logging and increase the intensity to make up for what they’d protected.
Dailan inspects a felled 2.4m diameter Brushbox in Koreelah State Forest, 2013.
It was a lonely battle. I didn’t have much local support. I spent a lot of time out there. I wrote a lot of reports and kept up the campaign as best I could. I had some wins. A lot of flora reserves I’d recommended were protected. I started a court case to protect an area of old-growth forest at Dome Mountain and it’s still standing. So, I wasn’t just hitting my head against a brick wall.
I co-founded the North East Forest Alliance in 1989, bringing together individuals and groups throughout northeast NSW who’d been working on local issues. We gained strength working together.
I used to be nicknamed the field marshal because I did all the bureaucratic work. I spent a lot of time lobbying: writing reports, assessing areas, making submissions, writing letters and meeting with politicians, sitting on committees. Lobbying is hard because there’s an incredible bias toward the status quo. To change things, you have to argue every step of the way. Then politics interferes and you’re overridden. It can be very frustrating.
By 1995 we had convinced the government to do a comprehensive regional assessment to implement the National Forest Policy Statement. That involved me going down to Sydney sometimes twice a week for meetings. It dominated my life totally.
To be effective at conservation you have to be obsessed.
I always had this conflict between my artwork and my activism. The two don’t go together very well. To be effective at conservation you have to be obsessed. You take time out and that’s time and opportunities lost. I did try for some years to develop my art with the idea of promoting the natural environment. But I just didn’t get the breakthrough I needed to be effective. I was a lot more effective as an activist.
Dailan drawing at East Point in Darwin 2002.
By 2003 we had 740,000 hectares of state forest converted to national park and about 300,000 hectares of old-growth and rainforest areas in state forest put aside into special protection zones. No amount of whatever else I did with my life could equal that.
I don’t think of myself as courageous…I never battled dragons or put my life on the line.
I don’t think of myself as courageous. It takes courage to lock yourself onto a bulldozer when it's about to drive off. But lobbying or writing reports isn’t courageous. I can see how you might think that bashing your head against a wall is a form of courage…or stupidity. But I never battled dragons or put my life on the line.
I think we’ve reached the stage now where the political feeling is that we must stop logging in NSW public native forests. We might get a breakthrough. I hope we get there soon so that I can go do some painting.
Photographs provided by Dailan Pugh.
Want to know more?
To find out more about Dailon’s work and life, check out these links about the Terania Creek protest, North East Forest Alliance, National Forest Policy Statement, and Dailan Pugh’s artworks.
To find out more about Mark Graham’s own fight to save our forests, check out these articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Monthly.