Dedication

This story is dedicated to the people who put themselves on the front line to protect the last remaining tall forests in East Gipplsand and their magnificent, endangered inhabitants.

These brave people spent countless hours in uncomfortable conditions, on shoe-string budgets to find and record the species of the forest in areas that were due to be logged for wood chips.

Andrew Lincoln, our nephew, was one such man. He is the 'Green Man' of this story.

The Battle for Brown Mountain was one of the battles in which he took part.

Felix was headstrong and fearless.

He followed his dad

up to the tops of steep cliffs and

dived with him into the deepest rock pools.

When he made up his mind

to do something, it was very hard to stop him!

Felix spent many days camping

with his family in magnificent forests with

rushing rivers and the tallest trees.

He loved to feel the earth and water between his toes; it made him feel connected to the earth.

As he walked amid the mighty tree ferns

and Mountain Ash, he imagined things.

Felix began to fall in love with the forest.

One day, when walking through the forest with his dad, they discovered an area where all the trees had been cut down.

All that was left was a dead place, where living things had been torn away.

Felix could not understand.

"Why would people destroy our beautiful forest dad?"

Why did they take the trees away?

Where will the owls and possums live now?

I can't hear the frogs or the birds anymore."

As years went by, he began

to find answers to these questions.

He discovered that the forests were

being cut down because people wanted

to make money from the forests.

They were cutting the mighty trees

just to make paper and cardboard!

Felix understood that wood

was very useful and that some forest trees, cut wisely, could provide for both people

and the other living things forever.

However, Felix also knew in his heart,

that to destroy a place so full of life,

was wrong.

Felix made a decision, the biggest of his life.

"I am going to care for the forest.



I will live among the mighty trees.

I will do whatever I can to keep them safe."

For many of us this would

have been a terribly hard thing to do

and many times it was hard for him too.

Over time he grew into the forest

and it grew into him.

The longer Felix lived in the forest,

the more he began to resemble it.

His hair grew and grew into a mane of tangled vines and his shoes slowly decayed until he didn't need them anymore.



His feet became like roots of a tree,

always in touch with the soil.

Felix became ‘The Green Man'.

Whilst living in the forest

as the Green Man, he met a group

of like-minded and brave people.

He worked with them to keep the forest safe.

When news came out that trees

were being logged in the foothills

of their beloved Brown Mountain

in far East Gippsland,

they knew they had to do something to stop the logging.

This was home to magnificent, giant trees...

and all sorts of living things...

"We must find a way to stop the loggers and save the mountain", they said.

And so, deep into the forest they went

to set up their special night cameras,

to see what creatures were living there.

This is how they discovered

that rare animals like

the Long-Footed Potoroo,

the Sooty and the Powerful Owl,

the Greater Glider and

the Yellow-Bellied Glider,

were living there.