From 1860 Tom Petrie became heavily involved in the timber industry. Since the 1840s his family had exploited the Hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) that gave the Pine River its name, and at Murrumba Creek a rafting ground was established, where pines cut from the Pine River district were rafted to Brisbane via Sandgate. In 1860, with the assistance of Aboriginal friends, Tom Petrie accompanied Brisbane sawmill proprietor William Pettigrew to Tin Can Bay, the Mary River and Fraser Island in search of commercially exploitable timbers, paving the way for the exploitation of the giant Kauri pine (Agathis robusta). Petrie also explored the North Coast between the Blackall Range and the sea, looking for stands of valuable red cedar (Toona australis) and reporting on the commercial value of other indigenous timbers. Working with William Pettigrew and employing Aboriginal labour, he extracted considerable quantities of cedar and hardwoods from the Maroochy area to build up capital to develop Murrumba. The Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) of the Blackall Ranges he did not exploit, even after the new Queensland colonial government in 1860 rescinded New South Wales Governor George Gipps' 1842 legislation prohibiting the issuing of occupation or timber licenses on Bunya lands in the North Coast district as far as the Maroochy River and west to the Great Dividing Range. Like his father Andrew, who had been instrumental in the declaration of this reserve, Tom Petrie understood that the Bunya pines and the ranges in which they were found were sacred to Aboriginal people.