Fifty years ago, when David Chandler bought 65 acres beside Deep Creek at Mickleham, he brought with him a passion for the environment born from rafting on the Franklin River in Tasmania.  His 65 acres was out of the way, a backwater, but what David didn’t know then was that Deep Creek would become a frontline.

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The surrounding landscape had already been transformed.  Local gold mines operating through to the 1930s had used the local timbers for their tunnels, blackwood and sheoak.  “They used to be called the whispering plains …. until we’d finished,” said the miners of that time.

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Still, says David, Deep Creek in the 1970s “was pretty much in pristine condition.  It was the back of people’s properties and as such no one took a real interest”.