Kevin Mills studied the lllawarra rainforest for his PhD and has written extensively on the flora of the New South Wales south coast over the past 35 years.“You will be surprized to see how different the vegetation is to that about Sydney, or any other place we have ever before seen. Upon the sloping land in front of the high bold land I observed there several cabbage-trees nearly in resemblance of plantain but yet a true cabbage Livistona australis, and the fern which I can no otherwise describe than by calling it a cabbage tree fern, for it is to distant appearance a cabbage, but upon a close inspection the leaves are found to be fern, and beautiful fern Cyathea australis. There were many trees that I am certain have never before been known in this country; one, the most remarkably new, was about twelve feet in height, its leaves large, broad and hairy, or rather woolly...and the smaller branches of it covered most thickly with long sharp prickles Dendrocnide excelsa. Well I remember them, for in the blindness of my eyes I seized one of the branches and was handsomely repaid for my hasty curiosity by a handful of thorns”.
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