century tourist attractions in the region, such as Fairyland (1907) and the Maze (1923) at Kuranda developed reflecting this view of the scrub. Other early commentators saw the fecundity of the scrub in a less favourable light, referring to it as gloomy, dank, and swarming with insects. Ways of seeing the rainforest began to shift in the 1920s from the Romantic view of nature as a collection of fascinating curiosities and grand and sublime landscapes, to an ecological paradigm which views nature as a systemic interrelationship between all living things including humans, and their environment. In the 1930s the North Queensland Naturalists' Club lobbied for language change, seeking to replace "scrub", often used in a derogatory manner, by "jungle", in a bid to change community attitudes to the rainforest. Valuing the rainforest gained momentum with the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Giant strangler figs such as the Curtain Fig Tree were considered to be wonders (or even freaks) of nature. Strangler figs are a parasitic species of tree that develop when the seed of a fig germinates on the top of another tree and then tries to plant its roots in the ground. Once the root system is established, the fig grows vigorously, finally killing the host tree and then growing independently. The unusual formation of the Curtain Fig Tree was created when its vertical roots strangled the host causing it to fall into a neighbouring tree on a 45 degree angle. The extensive aerial roots of the strangler fig then dropped from the oblique angle of the fallen tree to the forest floor, forming a "curtain". North Queensland strangler figs were portrayed photographically in The Queenslander from as early as 1896 and on postcards soon after 1900. Descriptions of unusual tropical vegetation such as the giant strangler figs began to appear in tourist guides from the 1920s. The Curtain Fig Tree was well known as a tourist attraction by the 1920s when Whitecars, a local hire-car service, commenced day tours of the southern Tableland , stopping to view the giant tree. Prior to this the only comfortable travel available to visitors to the southern Tableland was by train via the Kuranda Railway. Whitecars was established by Les Battle and Norm Graham, who developed a timetabled taxi service between Malanda, Yungaburra and Atherton, and between Malanda and Millaa Millaa, with three cars. They took advantage