How medicos are bringing an ailing slice of NSW back to life

John Van Der ­Kallen and Jane Morgan spend their working lives ­fixing people’s bodies. Outside of the nine-to-five, the couple are focused on repairing the natural world. Photographer ANDREW QUILTY captures their world.

John Van Der ­Kallen and Jane Morgan’s 198-acre former cattle property outside Nimbin in northern NSW. Picture: Andrew Quilty

John Van Der ­Kallen and Jane Morgan spend their working lives ­fixing people’s bodies – he’s a rheumatologist, and she’s a GP. And outside of the nine-to-five, the couple from Newcastle have embarked on a ­remarkable project, clubbing together with 25 friends – most of them fellow doctors – to buy a 198-acre former cattle property outside Nimbin in northern NSW and nurse it back to health.

They’ve planted 10,000 trees there in the past couple of years – among their group is a nurseryman who ­collects native seeds from the bush and propagates them – in a bid to ­“reforest and ­rewild” the place, aiming to restore it to the subtropical rainforest it was once before being cleared for farming in the late 1800s, Van Der Kallen says. They’re planting species including flooded gums, tallowwood, ­spotted gums, blackbutt, silky oaks, brushbox, sandpaper figs, hoop pine and bunya pine.

The site has good rainfall, but compacted, degraded soil; one of the first imperatives is to get a canopy in place, in order to encourage the growth of a natural understory. “Some of the eucalypts are 4-5m tall already, so it’s a start,” says Morgan. The big headache is weeds – on their regular working bees the group have to deal with lantana, morning glory and Madeira vine, knocking them back time and again with brushcutters and machetes. It can be a slog. “People are a lot more keen to plant trees than to weed,” she says.

John Van Der Kellen and Jane Morgan in the basic structure they live in while visiting their property outside Nimbin. Picture: Andrew Quilty

John Van Der Kellen (blue shirt, hat) and Jane Morgan, (off-white shirt, hat), along with other members of Seven Generations, planting native trees in a pasture formerly used for grazing livestock. Picture: Andrew Quilty

She and Van Der Kallen, who met as interns at Gosford Hospital (“Our eyes met across the emergency department,” he recounts with a laugh) and have three grown-up children, share a passion for environmental issues with the 25 others in the group, who come from Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle and Orange. “They’re mainly friends and colleagues with similar ideas to us about climate change and biodiversity,” Morgan explains. “We’re all working people with busy lives, but we try to get up here every six or seven weeks, and stay for a week at a time.”

The former cattle property has good rainfall, but compacted, degraded soil. Picture: Andrew Quilty

“We call it Seven Generations Forestry – the idea is that we’re doing something for the benefit of future generations,” adds Van Der Kallen. There’s a board, and decisions are made on a voting system, in accordance with how many shares each member holds. “More than half of us are ­doctors – surgeons, GPs and specialists – but we also have engineers, journalists and social workers,” he says.

“We don’t have any lawyers though,” Morgan adds. “We wouldn’t mind a lawyer.”

Jane Morgan admires the first bananas to fruit in the forest she and her husband planted on their property. Picture: Andrew Quilty

Since they started work on the property a couple of years ago, the bird life has come back in a big way – they now have whipbirds, azure kingfishers, butcher birds, wedgetail eagles, black cockatoos, fairy wrens and Lewin’s honeyeaters – as well as resident platypus, echidnas and lace monitors.

A waterhole on the property, which is being nursed back to health. Picture: Andrew Quilty

What does the future look like for this sliver of northern NSW? “100,000 trees would be awesome,” says Morgan. “I’m hoping it will be a beautiful place, dominated by trees providing shade and habitat. It’s hard work right now, and it can be discouraging when we have setbacks, like when a load of saplings are washed away – but it’s also a great social thing, working on a project with like-minded friends. We have a wonderful time, working together in the day and then having big meals together in the homestead at night; all our kids are getting involved now too. It’s full of goodwill.”

What does the future look like for this sliver of northern NSW? “100,000 trees would be awesome,” says Jane Morgan.

Andrew Quilty’s photographs were commissioned by The Climate Council