Community
1 September, 2026
Robertson students are doing something special
There’s something very special happening at Robertson Public School. For the past two years primary students haven been propagating rainforest seeds in a special polytunnel, potting them and re-potting them as needed.
There’s something very special happening at Robertson Public School.
For the past two years primary students have been propagating rainforest seeds in a special polytunnel, potting them and re-potting them as needed.
They are now ready for sale and local landholders are being encouraged to support efforts to save one of the region’s most significant natural assets and a remnant of Gondwanaland – a massive supercontinent dating back hundreds of millions of years.
The Robertson Rainforest has critically endangered status and forms part of the ‘Thin Green Line’ running from Far North Queensland to Tasmania.
Unfortunately, less than 20 per of the original Robertson Rainforest still remains.
Most of that (99 per cent) is on private land and the remaining one percent forms the Robertson Nature Reserve, looked after by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
After a long wait for the plants to be ready, the Robertson Environment Protection Society (REPS) and the Young Robertson Environment Protection Society (Young REPS) now have something to offer.
They are encouraging landholders to visit the school on Sunday, September 26 as part of the Robertson Rainforest Festival, to purchase plants including paper daisies and cabbage fern and to embrace an underrated asset.
“We’re ready to roll,” secretary of REPS Fiona King told The Southern Wire.
“I’ve kept it low key because we didn’t have anything to do … now we do,” she said.
Mrs King spends five hours at the school every Wednesday afternoon with all primary students involved in the unique initiative.
Every class attends on a rotating basis.
Mrs King said the project had initially been grant funded but was now self-funded and fully sustainable.
All proceeds from the sale of plants will be invested back into new infrastructure at the school.
Students have also assisted with plantings on private properties and have created a rainforest corridor on school grounds using pioneer trees, blackwood and pittosporum that will be underplanted with sassafras, lilly pilly and other species.
It will take 20 years for it to be fully established but Mrs King said they would be able to come back in 20 years’ time and see they have made a difference in terms of creating important rainforest corridors.
She said the school had been extremely supportive and the students were happy to be involved.
“They’re excited about making a difference,” she said.
She described the students as the ‘labour force’ that has turned a dream into a reality.
She acknowledged the initial dream was big but everything was now coming together.
Mrs King bought her own property six years ago, complete with its own small section of rainforest.
She said she had fallen in love with the rainforest as a place.
She said it was cool, calm and “kind of astounding”.
“I’m really proud of it.”
Mrs King’s message to private landholders is simple: fence it off and leave it alone.
“We need to embrace the messiness of nature,” she said.
She said she was looking for a change in attitude.
Fence the rainforest off. Keep the cattle out. Leave the dead trees where they are and don’t plant anything that’s not on the REPS list.
She said it was important to establish corridors for the sake of the animals that call the rainforest home, including quolls, pygmy possums and phascogales (a carnivorous marsupial)
“There are still rare animals surviving in these passages,” she said.
The rainforest is also home to a variety of species of birds including blue wrens, scrub wrens, robins, powerful owls, other owls, parrots, honeyeaters and lyrebirds.
She said the lyrebirds and small wrens were under threat and in decline.
The infrastructure at Robertson Public School includes the polytunnel as well as a hothouse and greenhouse.
The final phase will be a hardening up area so the plants get exposed to the elements.
Besides the paper daisies and cabbage fern the students have also been propagating coachwood, sassafras, lilly pilly, pink wood and muttonwood from seeds collected on private land.
Mrs King is keen to get some volunteer assistance if anyone has time to spare on a Wednesday afternoon.
She can be contacted via email at secretart@reps.org.au
Volunteers will need a Working with Children card.
The Robertson Rainforest Festival - being organised by REPS – will constitute a series of events over September and October culminating in a festival fun day at the Robertson School of Arts on October 4.
The community celebration will feature musicians, artists, poets, wildlife legends and regenerative farmers’ food stalls.
Speakers on the day will include artist Ben Quilty, ‘wombat man’ John Creighton from the Southern Highlands Wildlife Sanctuary, poet Peter Ramm, Nicole Feggans from Jamberoo Mountain Farm and ecologist David Rush.
The community celebration on Sunday, October 4 will feature musicians, artists, poets, wildlife legends and regenerative farmers’ food stalls.
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