As agriculture expanded along the Queensland coastal belt it eventually reached the Daintree lowlands (north of the Daintree River). From the 1920s clearing of rainforest to establish farms occurred at the locality now known as Cow Bay and later at Diwan.
The image below provides a snapshot of the Daintree lowlands in 1982 and shows the extent of historical clearing. The overlay shows the properties with tropical rainforest and those that were cleared. While regrowth has occurred since that time, some of the larger blocks remain cleared or have clearings on them that have become weed infested.
