The Wairambar Rainforest forms the boundary region between the Ngadjonji and Mamu Rainforest People .

• The area was explored by Christie Palmerston and his guide Poinkee in 1886

• the local area was prospected for gold in the 1890's and again in the 1960's , it proved unprofitable

• It was selectively forested in 1928 for red cedar

Aboriginal occupation of the area between Cooktown and Cardwell probably dates back to the earliest human occupation of Australia c.43,000 years ago; even its oral pre-history goes back over 15,000 years: one of the recorded stories appears to describe the volcanic activity that produced some crater lakes 10-20,000 years ago. The northern tribes (Barrineans) may have been the first wave of the Aboriginal occupation of Australia, making theirs the world’s oldest rainforest culture.This differed markedly from that of most other Australian Aboriginal tribes, with heavy dependence on arboreal skills, use of toxic plants and unique weapons. Major centres of survival of the culture are on Bloomfield River and the upper Murray River. More than 20 distinct tribal groups occupied the area within traditional boundaries using a wide range of forest products, including several toxic plants that required complex treatment to make them safe to eat. Such intensive prehistoric use of toxic food plants is not recorded elsewhere. The area continues to hold great significance for the local Aboriginal communities, who see themselves as rainforest people. Each group has customary obligations for management of their country under Aboriginal law. To them, the adjoining World Heritage Wet Tropics Rainforest Area is a series of complex living cultural landscapes where the natural features are interwoven with their religion, spiritual life, economic uses (food, medicines and tools), social and moral organisation. Their hunting and gathering within the site remains a legal right, though logging does not.

Extracts from Christie Palmerston's Diary are given below:

Palmerston’s Diary September 21st to 24th , 1886 on Wairambar Creek

A diary by Palmerston, written at the time of his discovery, was reprinted in the Queensland Figaro, 26 March 1887 and sheds a different light on the Russell River find. Part of the document relates to the local aborigines and their customs and can be said to be somewhat unusual.

September 21st. 1886

The weather is very hot. I got 15 dwt. of gold by dinner-time, and then left off work, being too ill to continue. There is another boy down with fever.

September 22nd

The weather is as bright as one could wish. March flies are in amazing confusion. I worked another half-day for half oz. of gold. The beach is still submerged, but is only ankle-deep in water.

September 23rd

Again rain is falling in gusty sheets, and the day is dark and drear. My little stock of flour is exhausted, and so am I.

September 24th

It is still raining. I am much better, but weak. During the afternoon I cleaned out a blue slate crevice, at the upper end of the beach, dishing off 5 oz. of shotty gold, and washing 1 oz. to the dish several times. I am tortured all over with pains, and have no more energy than a snail. I omitted to mention, on 24th of September, that, although I was so very ill, I managed to cross Wairambar Creek and surmount the plateau beyond it, to witness the 'Coway' ceremony over 'Nooychoo's' dead body. The word 'Coway' is the native name for 'mummy.' There are several hundreds of aborigines called together for the special purpose of mummifying the corpse.

These blacks were loitering about the body in crowds. On being notified of my approach, they formed themselves into two long lines, as a sort of body-guard for me to pass between to the dead body, which was fixed on a stage about two feet high, with a back to it.

The deceased was placed in a sitting posture, in the usual native style known as 'tajoj' fashion. A slow fire was alight on the ground immediately under the stage; the arms were bent and upraised, with the hands open, as if in exclamation; the head rested, with a cadaverous lean, on its left shoulder; the mouth was open and showed a swollen tongue; the head was freed from the white hair by which I had known it; the features were bloated beyond recognition; the arms and legs were much withered, and the trunk was unnaturally bulky, being between a semi-cooked and putrid-blown state. 'Wallajar,' mentioned elsewhere here, an elder brother of the deceased, stood close to the latter's left side, and seemed to be the only sorrowful being in the crowd. On the same stage, on the other side of the dead body, sat a well-cured mummy of a still older brother, named 'Monumbaloo', seeming singularly large, even in its anciently shrivelled state.

I would have liked to have taken it for the Brisbane Museum, but was afraid to ask the blacks for it, though not from any personal fear of them. If the above scene was disgusting, there is immeasurably worse to follow - a scene that fired my soul with indignation and revolt, almost putting me to the point of rifling as many as I could of the foul brutes, but discretion regarding future personal considerations held me curbed, thus it was that I allowed them, unrebuked, to wallow in their dead's filth.

My boy 'Poinkee' told me that, if I had seen sufficient, I had better go, for never before had white-man witnessed the offensive operations they were in a hurry to perform. However, I asked to be allowed the 'privilege'. They demurred, and much talk ensued, ending with a promise from me to give a pocket-handkerchief to each, on my returning from Geraldton. That proved rather an expensive promise. I believe there were a dozen of the dead man's sons present – all young men. One of them named 'Ninkah', was the principal actor in what I saw.

He took the dead body of his father astride his shoulders, carrying it uprightly, so that its exuding matter trickled down his naked back. In that fashion he carried it between the files of niggers, all the while murmuring something. Then, with the help of others, he laid the body on its right side amid some green fronds spread for the purpose. 'Ninkah' then borrowed my pocket knife, and commenced nicking the body just below the ribs, on the left loin, moaning at the end of each nick, while the crowd corroboreed, stamping their feet and clapping their hands. With the piercing of the trunk the corroboree ended; and as many as could well lay over the body, and wedge their faces over the incision, did so, to catch the obnoxious gases that issued there from. When these had escaped, the incision was made large enough to admit 'Ninkah's' hands.

From that time, the knife was not used, the son slowly tore out his father's intestines, stripped them of any grease which he distributed to other relatives to grease their heads and bodies. Indeed, many of them could not wait to be presented with grease, but rushed up and plunged their hands into the dead body, raking out whatever they could get to smear themselves with. Pulling out the entrails seemed to be tough work, for they were a considerable time about it, several times squeezing their heads into the body, as if to sever something with their teeth. At last the whole of the offal came out. One powerfully built fellow, with the whole of his head's crown bald, though the remainder was plentifully dark haired, that hung down about his shoulders in long matted twigs, that might be mistaken for ringlets in the distance, carried the offal away in his arms - hugging the filthy burden as if it was as precious as a new-born babe. He disappeared in the jungle, with several others following him; after a considerable time, he appeared from quite a different direction, with it still in his arms, and laid it down near his fire, covering it with some green bushes. The heart, liver and lungs were torn out, a small piece at a time handed about and prepared for a cannibalistic meal straight away. The body was again lifted upon the stage, and laid on its side over the fire. A blanket was thrown over it, and it was left to be cooked to the proper stage of mummy preservation. But, before this was done, the gins took their turn at wallowing in the internals of the corpse, in like manner to the men. One aged gin lay full length along it, and many times kissed the crawling maggoty face. The grave old 'Wallajar' took no hand in the ceremony, but stood and sat some fifteen yards off by me, with one arm round me. Large tears trickled down his wrinkled cheeks the whole time. A shirt being the only garment on me, I took it off and gave it to him; and distributed a box of matches amongst the rest. I left the camp amid a babble of aboriginal gaiety and stinking embraces. The sickening smell hovered about me for days; even the little food I ate, and the very pannikins from which I drank, seemed to be polluted with it. Before leaving the scene, I selected between twenty and thirty of the ablest youths to accompany me to Geraldton, in the capacity of swagmen, immediately starting some of them to the more elevated tablelands for a supply of 'coohoy' nuts for food on our way.

Next morning, in spite of the Johnstone River's wild appalling stream, despite its dark, repugnant, thorny jungle, which had to be chopped in separate bits for every foot of access or examination, despite its vapours of poisonous humidity, and not less eludable vile crawling leaches, I started the party, consisting of Mr. G. E. Clarke, Mr. W. Joss, and one aboriginal, painfully piled with about 80 Ib. per man, in quest of the yellow metal, while I went down the river for Geraldton, via Goondi Plantation.

The original discovery of gold on the Russell River is thought to have 'officially' been made by George Clarke (of Charters Towers), William (Billy) Joss and that enigma - Christy Palmerston. Some historical publications suggest that Palmerston was accompanied by a partner. Harry Svensson.

In mid -1886, George Clarke and William Joss had just completed selecting a tract of country south of Herberton for Francis Stubley of Charters Towers (some reports suggest that Joss already owned the land). Stubley named the property Evelyn Station after his wife and today the area bears the name of the Evelyn Tableland. Clarke and Joss decided to prospect the upper reaches of the Russell, but it appears that Palmerston was already searching the western branch (Wairambar Creek), so Clarke chose the eastern head - Cooparoo Creek, later to be the site of the Boonjie Deep Leads (Palmerston, when writing about the Russell, mentions that he suggested to Clarke and Joss that they try Cooparoo Creek). Clarke pegged the Coopa Claim and soon after he had returned from Herberton, most of the edge of the volcanics in the vicinity were covered with claims. In the 24 October 1961 edition of the North Queensland Register, Hugh Borland wrote:

Christy Palmerston had an extensive knowledge of the scrublands north of the Johnstone River.

Michael O'Seary Coyyan, historical writer of former years, in writing of the great explorer gave this:

Ignoring dates for a while, I may state that I started for the abovementioned township amid torrents of rain. On the second day's travel, about mid-day, we struck and crossed the North Johnstone River at the old diggings, there learning from some Chinamen that Mr. G. E. Clarke and Mr. W. Joss had passed up the Johnstone on a prospecting tour on the day previous. I brought my boys to a halt, and started four black-trackers after them. Mr. Clarke returned with these, and I showed him my gold and directed him to the places where I had discovered it. Being well pleased with the sight of the fruits of my exploration, he graciously gave me food that he knew he could in a short time ill-spare. I ate this with a relish that sank the best of blackfellows' fare to the level of mere animal existence that no civilized being could envy.

Christy Palmerston had an extensive knowledge of the scrublands north of the Johnstone River. Michael O'Seary Coyyan, historical writer of former years, in writing of the great explorer gave this interesting information,

"During the early part of 1886 Palmerston explored the Russell River country and on one of his trips found gold on Wen-imbah (sic.) Creek and the lower reaches of the stream. He reported his find at Geraldton (now Innisfail) and at the same time George Clarke reported and applied for a prospecting claim which he named Coopa and which was situated on the highlands of the Russell River. Clarke's discovery was reported to the Herberton Warden. Palmerston erected a store at the base of Bartle Frere, later selling out to a Chinaman whose countrymen in the Russell-Mulgrave gold-bearing areas numbered about 1000."

Land for the Wairambar Rainforest was purchased in 2002 in the memory of the late Lois Ruth Michna, who died later that year. At that time we began our rainforest repair, enhancement and restoration work in parallel with our nature refuge work.

The Wairambar Rainforest became a Nature Refuge by enactment in Queensland Parliament in 2006. The Nature Refuge Agreement with the Queensland Government had a ten year life-span and ended in 2016. We continue to be a private, non-affiliated nature refuge

A powered shipping container accommodation / research facility is available for use by genuine researchers. (see the page on using the research facility on this web site)

2006 a shipping container based dwelling was constructrted on-site

2012 the alternative technology trapezoidal structural insulated panel home "Studio Nimbus" was built on the site to facilitate fulltime rainforest restoration and repair.