They are relics of the Gondwana age but five years after Australia’s black summer these trees are dying a ‘long, slow death’

Deadened canopy in a section of Nightcap national park that experienced a high-intensity fire during the 2020 bushfires. Photograph: David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Thousands of years of accumulated leaf fall makes the ground bounce like a mattress underfoot and, high above, rainforest coachwood trees form a dense canopy that dresses the understory in permanent shade.

Some of the unique plants in this rainforest can trace their lineage back 40 or 50m years when the Gondwana supercontinent was breaking apart and Australia was detaching itself from what is now Antarctica.