Spawned in rainforests and known by the botanical name of Toona ciliata, the trees grew on vast Hunter River floodplains. Soon, as they became scarce, loggers awkwardly hauled it out of remote gullies, made rafts of the logs and floated them down the Hunter River to convict-era Newcastle.

Much of the hardy cedar, which had taken centuries to grow, was originally used to decorate the fine homes of colonial Sydney, being used for doors, wainscoting, architraves and elegant pieces of furniture. Valuable for export, author John Vader once even nominated the ‘red gold’ as “the tree that built the nation”.

By probably about 1840, however, very little cedar stands were left untouched in NSW, but the demand for the warm, beautifully grained timber continued before demand fell a century later. Today, the red cedar is again highly prized. Old cedar items, like sideboards, can fetch thousands of dollars.

But we’ll never see those ancient forests again. Cedar-cutting was intense. One timber getter in northern NSW alone, working over 20 years until 1939, is credited with having cut down 2000 such trees in a third wave of organised timber harvesting.

Cedar felling in the Hunter began in 1801 and the best, most easily accessible logs had been felled within 20 years. So much timber was growing in rainforests along the banks of the present Paterson River that it was originally called the Cedar Arm.

Now there’s virtually none left, only rare remnants remain. The site of Wallis Plains/Maitland was at first simply called ‘The Camp ’and accommodated small gangs of convict cedar-getters. To get an idea of what Maitland’s now lost rainforests once looked like, you have to use your imagination.

Look down over the Hunter River today from the high riverbank levee near the bridge across to suburban Lorn. Here, can you visualise the floodplain’s deep fertile soils supporting a dense landscape with vines so thick any passage seemed impossible. They were places of perpetual gloom with a fragile understorey of stinging vines and creepers. And very wet! Rainforests require about 1000mm of rain each year.

The local natives called the district Bu-Un, of place of the heron waterfowl. Besides cedar trees, the forest canopy here consisted of the interlocked branches of enormous fig trees with giant buttressed roots.

A visitor, Royal Navy Lieutenant W.Breton, writing of his travels in NSW and Van Dieman’s land in 1830-1833, wrote of Maitland’s “great fig”. Roughly triangular in shape, the perimeter of the tree was reportedly about 60 ft, or 18.3 metres today. The first branches of the tree trunk were at 9.15m high and the western side of the fig alone measured at more than 6.5m wide.

Convict timber getters exploiting riverside cedar resources were soon followed by settlers, clearing land to plant crops.

Some rare Hunter Valley cedar trees still survive in suburbia, such as one behind Campbell’s Store at Morpeth. And to get a glimpse into the tough terrain loggers and settlers faced, it’s worth a trip down the highway towards Sydney, to the privately owned Forest of Tranquility, a 40-hectare rainforest sanctuary, at Ourimbah.

There’s a small entry fee, but well worth it to be further educated about this nature world. Here, the canopy acts as a protective umbrella to keep forest humidity high, creating a delicate, stable microclimate needed for the damp, moist rainforest to survive.

View spongy-barked coachwood trees, glimpse a distant red cedar, see tall turpentine trees sought after as wharf piles, bangalow palms, cabbage trees and a platypus pond.

Along the way, also learn how rainforests provide both food and shelter. Some 75% of flora species are said to have originated in rainforests, yet some say our surviving rainforests might only fit today in a circle of about 80km radius.

This protected gully has rainforest on one side and open forest on the other. It has never, however, been untouched by man. Far from it. The area was heavily logged for 100 years from 1830.

Ourimbah was formerly known as Blue Gum Flat and part of the route north to Maitland. Its Aboriginal name may mean “valley of tall timbers” and it may even have been a ‘sacred circle’ initiation ground.

Red cedar was the colony of NSW’s third main export by the 1820s, ceasing then with the financial crash of the 1890s. The last serious logging locally took part in the 1930s.

Bullock teams initially took milled timber to Narara Creek to transport it to Sydney. The timber industry really boomed though from 1889 with the opening of Ourimbah railway station.

The only evidence of the destruction today are tree stumps and logging trails with timber treads, like steps, made by loggers to stop the bullock teams slipping while dragging logs uphill.  

So, this is a rainforest rejuvenated, inhabited with many species of threatened flora and fauna. Over past decades, demand for all timbers has sharply dropped with concrete sleepers being now used in railways, steel replaced bridge timbers and new homes have concrete floors.

But here, the forests were once selectively logged of everything commercially viable, from red cedar to white mahogany, ironbark, blue gum and specialist rainforest timbers like lilly pilly, white beech, coachwood and sassafras all taken to the onsite mill.  

Trees like white beech are said to be rare in rainforests today due to heavy logging. Light, soft yet durable and termite resistant, it’s easy to see why it was in high demand. With a reputation for not swelling or shrinking, it was ideal for boat decking and seaplane floats.

These green cathedrals can also provide a home for secretive animals as diverse as brush turkeys, yellow-tailed black cockatoos who screech before rain approaches, to swamp wallabies, magical fireflies and lyrebirds who roost high in trees, but feed entirely on the ground.

Surprisingly perhaps, Newcastle, for the past 10 years, has had its own tribute to the iconic tree which provided much of our wealth for a century. Frequently overlooked, it’s a 14-metre tall steel sculpture in King Street opposite Marketown, symbolising the seed (if spectacularly out of scale) of the once dominant red cedar tree.

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