‘The Newsprint‘ – A Social and Forestry History of Maydena. An Experimental Logging Town in the Tyenna Valley, Tasmania. 1920 – 2020
by Peter H MacFie
This is a sample chapter from the book. Illustrations have been removed and the footnotes have been changed to endnotes for ease of reading. This chapter sets the scene ahead of ANM coming o the Tyenna Valley.
Chapter 3: Top of the Valley
Sawmills, Sassy and Susso
Timber is a romantic industry I think, though one is always torn two ways in one’s feelings about it. The smell of sawn wood, and the sound of sharp axes is rather thrilling – and all those timber men are awfully decent – especially the older men, with grizzled moustaches, and soft voices, and their humorous ways of saying things.
Ida McAulay, bushwalker, 1925
While excursionists and skiers came to the newly opened Mt Field National Park, further up the Tyenna Valley a timber boom followed the 1917 completion of the rail line extension to Fitzgerald. Settlers and bush-workers moved in, building cottages and huts all along the route of the railway line. Some of these were crude structures, and contained families who had to ‘rough it’ until something better could be provided.[1] The homes of mill hands were concentrated near the various sawmills at Arcadian Home and Tyenna. At Fitzgerald, many original weather-board cottages and the hall have survived.
Before the arrival of the railways, the impact of logging on the forests was minimal, but with the gradual extension of the rail line, large mills (with the backing of families experienced in Tasmania’s southern forests) moved into the Tyenna Valley. Mill tramlines spread out into the forests, and the effects of unchecked exploitation began to be noticed. The only challenge to unhindered development of the timber industry was the developing interest in the preservation of what was to become Mt Field National Park.
By 1917, the forests had for many years been under the control of the Lands Department, which issued licences of up to 14 years for an annual rent of only £1 per 100 acres plus a royalty on timber cut. Under this system there was no guarantee that leases would be systematically or completely cut over, and no thought was given to protection. One result of this was that small, isolated patches of merchantable trees were left scattered over the Tyenna Valley.
There were people who had for some years criticised the wasteful timber practices which resulted from the government policy. In 1912, H.R. Nicholls, editor of the Hobart Mercury, carried out an investigation into the condition of the Florentine Valley. A conservationist (and conservative after whom the H.R. Nicholls Society is named), he wrote that the timber of the area was ‘too valuable to allow settlers to come in and destroy it’, and that it would be a ‘national calamity’ if anything endangered the resource. He recommended that 42,000 acres be set aside.[2]
A formal Forestry Department was established in 1921. The following year forest assessor A.G.S. Lawrence, accompanied by D.A. Lane, T.J. Stubbs, Conservator of Forests Llewellyn Irby, and noted bushman, Robert Hay, surveyed the timber potential of the Florentine Valley. Access was made from Hamilton via the old Dawsons Road with a dray (pulled by six bullocks) which carried one and a quarter tonnes of supplies. The party stopped at the hut at Gordon Bend. Lawrence noted that there was a severe depression in the timber industry, and that due to a lack of ‘vigorous forest policy in years gone by … nearly all the area of easy access had been cut out or destroyed by fire’.[3] A huge timberage was still available, with eucalypts averaging nearly 28,000 superfeet per acre to a total of nearly 945 million superfeet [4] for the entire area. [5] Of the minor species, there were myrtle (82%), sassafras (7%), celery-top pine (9%) and blackwood (1.5%). Lawrence estimated that between 1913 and 1918 nearly 30 million su.ft[6] of eucalypt logs had been cut in the Tyenna Valley, in addition to over 6 million su.ft of sassafras, nearly 190,000 su.ft of tallow-wood[7] and 91,000 su.ft of myrtle and blackwood.[8] Following this expedition, 42,000 acres[9] in the Florentine Valley were reserved for forestry.[10]
The first mill registered in the Tyenna Valley was operated by Charles Browning on the Russell (later Tyenna) River near Russell Falls, and ran from 1904 to 1918. In the 1920s, the mill was taken over by G. Waddle, who moved the site from National Park to Crookes Siding and worked his lease with a tramline three kilometres long. Kemp and Denning’s Mill operated near National Park.[11]
Large scale exploitation of the forests at the top of the Tyenna Valley began with the establishment of Gourlay’s Mill at Fitzgerald in 1918. This mill was quickly followed by the short-lived Lune Timber Co’s mill at Tyenna. Several other mills were then established. These included Mayne’s at Kallista, Flakemore’s at Arcadian Home, two on the Adamsfield track, one north-east of Tyenna, the Mt Field Company’s (or Holmes’) mill at what is now Maydena and Risby Bros’ 1924 mill beyond Junee in Risbys Basin at Pillingers Creek, plus a number of smaller mills.
Tyenna was the site of several mills. The Huon Timber Co. established its two large mills there in 1917 – the first at Stephens Bridge, the second at Tyenna itself – and worked from both sides of the railway line.
Bob Knight was the manager, with Bobby Lowe his clerk.
Today nothing remains of what was once the largest sawmilling village in the area. Claude Marriott[12] recalls that the company employed about 130 men, most of whom it brought from its Hastings Mill in the Huon. It also brought two log haulers, one a Kennedy and the other a Tanji. Arguments were common about which was better. The mill’s timber reserves on the flank of Mt Field National Park around Marriotts Falls were reached by tramway. A branch line running off the main line carried sawn timber to Hobart. The Garth family lived at Tyenna, above Claude Marriott’s house, and Garth Snr tended the mill horses night and morning.[13]
Freight records for Tyenna railway siding reveal that the heyday of the Huon Co. mill was short-lived. In 1917 over 1,000 tonnes were shipped, rising to 9,772 in 1921, then falling from 9,165 in 1924 to 4,555 by 1927. By 1930 the tonnage was a mere 567. Passenger numbers follow the same pattern. By 1932 the mill, a ‘white elephant’, traded as Millar’s Timber Trading Co., and was managed by Arthur Jeffries.[14]
Other mills were moved from the forests in southern Tasmania; in December 1917, for example, the box-mill of Walter Webster and George Ims closed near Lunawanna, Bruny Island, and was transferred to Tyenna.[15]
Several mills were also located at National Park. Lorkin Bros operated a mill at Arcadian Home for which a special railway siding was successfully requested in 1923, the sleepers and track having been removed from the now disused Crookes Siding. Lorkin’s 3 foot tramline ran parallel to the Derwent Valley line from where the milled timber was off-loaded. The first mill tramline ran from the west of the siding, while the second was situated on the National Park side, both crossing the road to Fitzgerald.[16]
The Tasmanian Government Railway (TGR) was earning £150 per month from Lorkin’s first mill, and by December 1923 he was erecting a second. He expected the mill to last 15 years at the then current rate of output. The two mills were employing 50 men, and wanted more. The TGR earned additional revenue from supplying the settlements. Already the new siding was too small, as only six trucks could be loaded at one time. Lorkin complained that the time taken to load his wood truck interfered with the sawmill’s operation, and sought ‘some little privileges with the Department’ owing to the importance of the mill.[17]
In June 1920 the Risbys moved their Moogara Mill to a site at National Park. [18] The manager of the mill, E.C. ‘Chummy’ Larkins, was regarded by C.A. Risby as ‘the best mill manager of his time’. He described the National Park forests as ‘a good cutting proposition’. The mill was powered by a Jackass and Fraction engine. Risbys also had a box mill operated by H. O’Donahoo and R. Benson, who leased three horses from Risbys at ten shillings a week, purchasing cases from the box mill at sixpence a case. This mill was located about one kilometre past National Park. In 1927 Chummy Larkins moved his family to a house at Fitzgerald. The mill employed a workforce of up to 30 men. Apart from the Larkins family, employees included Jimmy Williams, Percy Statton, Bob Hills, Phil Hutchings, Jim Brittain and Tommy Price. The bush gang included Lance and Tom Cook, Jack Barratt, several Holmes men, Vinty Clark and Derwent Marriott.[19]
Also in 1920, Henry Chesterman established a mill near the entrance to National Park. The machinery was moved from Lady Bay, Southport to the new location about a quarter of a mile above Crookes Siding on the opposite side of the river. The mill worked a new area behind National Park’s eastern face, and was reached by a long tramway which included a high pole timber bridge. The foreman at Chesterman’s Mill was William Lowe. The mill was estimated to be worth £6,000 in 1932. Locals benefited from the development, with the owner being paid £1,000 for the mill site while other families received £50 to £300 for tram and timber rights.[20]
A number of smaller mills were also established in the 1920s. From 1918 to 1922 E.W. Flakemore ran a mill at Arcadian Siding, which was then run by the Lorkin Brothers until 1926.[21] Another mill, which loaded timber at Sharpes Siding, was operated for some years by the Sharpe brothers, while Arthur Jeffries had a mill near Marriotts Falls.
When Joseph Gourlay and his son Jasper, a Hobart timber merchant, erected their mill above the Fitzgerald railway station in 1918, the district was ‘practically in its native state’.[22] Although the lease associated with the mill embraced about 500 acres of private land and about 1,000 acres of Crown land, they were initially able to cut timber from trees within 100 metres of the railway station. The year before the mill was opened, a report stated:
Care will have to be taken that the characteristic beauties of the place are not spoiled by debris. Mr. Gourlay has given an assurance that the sawdust and waste products will be satisfactorily disposed of… The timber to be taken will consist principally of white gum (commonly known as swamp gum ie E. regnans), which is coming into favour for furniture and flooring, and up to 50,000 super feet[23] will be turned out weekly. An engine has been secured at Bradshaw’s Creek, and will be working by October. … Portion of the lease runs at the back of Junee Caves … and includes also a reserve granted to the early Western Railway Syndicate. On all of the leases the timber resources include, in addition to vast belts of white gum, blackwood and what is known as swamp wattle, which is in demand for artificial limbs.[24]
In 1917 Ned Dillon and his son Harry E. Dillon left Alonnah on Bruny Island for Fitzgerald to manage the Junee sawmills of Jasper Gourlay, where Harry worked as the engine driver. When ANM arrived 20 years later, Gourlays sold their leases to the company and many mill bushmen, like Leo Thorne, became ANM employees.
Fitzgerald was largely dependent on Gourlay’s Mill, which employed over 35 local men. Two settlers in the locality used the company’s tramway as their outlet, and the Pioneer Woodware Co. used it for hauling sassafras without paying. From 1918 to 1923 the Gourlays outlaid a total of over £51,000 consisting of £42,000 in wages, £8,000 in railway freight, £600 in timber royalties and £300 in rents.[25] Gourlays proudly claimed ‘Our mill never stopped during the Depression.’
Photographs show the mill perched on the bank above the Tyenna River. Timber was taken across the river by two trucks operating on an aerial ropeway. One would come down full of palings pulling the other back empty.[26] A chute carried sawn timber from the mill across the Tyenna River to the Fitzgerald railway station on the opposite bank.
When Claude Marriott was about fifteen, his brother left Gourlay’s Mill and Claude took his place as wagon boy.
It was his first job, and was vividly remembered:
I’d have one wagon and the bloke I was working with, he’d have the other one. We’d take one wagon each, and then we’d load the logs on. He’d load them on the winch, winding it, and wind the logs onto the landing. We were about four miles out in the bush… We’d go out there, and we’d do about three loads a day. And I’d walk home from there to Tyenna every night. Every night and morning. Had to be up about five o’clock each morning. (and it would) be five o’clock or after when I’d get home. Up next morning again. [Chuckle] I was as fit as fit then though. Saturday afternoon I’d play football. I’d run all the way home from work after half a day. [Laughter][27]
In the bush, trees were felled by the Murray brothers[28], John and Walter, who were champion axemen and hailed from Bruny Island.[29] The eight-wheeled wagons were drawn along the wooden rails by four teams of four horses, which Claude considered ‘a lovely sight coming into the mill’. The job was dangerous:
The mate that I was working with, he was taken to hospital. He got his rib broken in an accident in the same place. I took his place, and this dray was just heading away down, and (hit) this bad rail, … and the log shot off I reckon. I was bowled over onto the side and the log went down; stopped up four or five [metres] down the road. My mate, Leo Thorne, … he came round the corner and he thought I was gone. He said, ‘Are you hurt?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not hurt. I’m bruised a little bit, but I could have been killed.’ Ah gee.[30]
Another danger was caused by frosty weather:
There used to be a pretty steep hill here. We hadn’t quite reached that, and, frosty weather you know, sometimes you’d be going down and it would lock it all. The wheels would sort of block and away she’d go. That happened to me one day. I finished up about a mile further down. [Chuckle] You couldn’t do anything about it. If I’d jumped off it would have knocked me, I reckon. Anyway they built this tramway out over the Humboldt Divide. It went about three or four miles up there…[31]
Despite the dangers of the work, Claude Marriott describes Jasper Gourlay as a good boss. Several other mills were built in the Fitzgerald area. These included J.M. Mayne’s Mill which started working at Kallista in 1922, and the Mt Field Timber Co. Mill (also known as Holmes’ Mill after its manager), which operated on the Junee Road with Bill Lowe as driver.[32] It was established in 1920, burnt down in 1924 and was rebuilt. The mill employed 60 men.[33]
Although most mills were producing timber for the building trade, the Mt Field Timber Co. sent the Tasmanian Premier samples of axe, pick-axe and hammer handles made from sassafras and tallow-wood grown in the Tyenna district. According to the World newspaper, these were of ‘splendid quality and compare[d] more than favourably with the imported product’.[34] The mill was powered by a 30 hp Jackass boiler and a 16 hp Ransomes Sims and Jeffries portable.[35]
In 1925, a party of middle class bush-walkers, including Ida McAulay and her friends, participated in the first women’s bush walk in the region. They were offered a lift for the first five kilometres along Holmes’ Mill tramway on one of the timber trucks going out to bring in logs. Their guide, a Mr Salter from Fitzgerald, had organised their trip. Ida McAulay described him as:
… a wonderful old chap well over six feet high and with very broad shoulders and enormous hands and feet. He is a well known character round Fitzgerald and everybody likes him. He used to tell us all sorts of tales of his adventures in the bush. He has done exploring, prospecting and timber work. The surveyors and forestry people generally take him out with them. I’ve never seen anything like him in the bush. He seems to know direction by instinct, and can keep a perfectly straight line through the thickest bush. They call him the ‘ ‘uman compass’ at Fitzgerald. He has a very slow voice and gentle manner, and he seems to be able to smell water in places where he doesn’t know the country at all. He would just say, ‘I think there’s water somewhere hereabouts, if you ladies would like a drink’… Then he would take a billy and poke around a bit, and sure enough he would return with water.[36]
Ida’s party found the bushmen’s language changed when the women bushwalkers were seen:
… on the way out from Fitzgerald on the timber truck we realised that the men were very careful and polite with their language to the horses when the truck ran off the line. This made it all the more amusing when suddenly from the direction of a side tramline which branched off from ours we heard a perfect stream of furious language. There was a very deadly silence on the truck, when the man came into view down the line and shouted, ‘Eric, where’s my —– brake rope?’ Then he stopped and gulped while his eyes nearly started out of his head at the sight of us, and after another silence, he said in a small choked voice – ‘What did you do with my brake rope?’
Eric was a cheery little chap – dark, with a low forehead and terrifically broad shoulders. These timber men have the reputation of being a rough lot, but they were awfully nice to us. Gentle in their manner, and ready to do anything to help.
Ida McAulay described the undisturbed forests:
‘Primeval’ was the word that recurred to our minds again and again as we went down the Florentine Valley. I had never seen such bush. We seemed to be very deep down, as if we were walking at the bottom of the sea. It was dark and shadowy and the light that filtered down to us was green. The silence was uncanny. Thick green moss dampened our footsteps. Queer fungi, gnarled roots, curiously shaped logs covered with moss, and dark twisted branches set the imagination at work… We were shut in on every side by tree-ferns and luscious undergrowth, and above us the myrtle trees, blue gums and stringybark towered so high that it was difficult to see the sky.
On the return trip from the Gordon Bend, no truck was due to arrive at the logging camp the next day, so ‘one of the men (instead of letting us walk the three miles back to Fitzgerald) left his tea, got a tired horse out of the stable, and drove us all into Fitzgerald, and then took the horse and truck back again that night… His natural good manners would have been hard to beat anywhere.’
In 1928 Holmes used an 1892 vintage Beyer Peacock engine. In 1930 Ida McAulay again hitched a ride on a Holmes’ Mill truck when returning from Adamsfield. During the intervening five years, photos reveal that the mill had changed from horse-drawn to motorised hauling on the main tramline:
Coming in from Chrisp’s Hut next morning we had a ride on a huge tree that was being taken in by motor tractor to Holmes’ Mill. It took us much longer than if we had walked, but it was an inspiring ride. Timber is a romantic industry I think, though one is always torn two ways in one’s feelings about it. The smell of sawn wood and the sound of sharp axes is rather thrilling – and all those timber men are awfully decent – especially the older men, with grizzled moustaches, and soft voices, and their humourous ways of saying things.[37]
Other mills in the Fitzgerald area included the Risbys Basin Mill, which in 1924 Risby. Bros. moved from National Park. The new mill was much larger than the earlier, the whole operation costing the Risbys about £4,500.[38] Terry Larkins recalls:
… the mill was down to the left of (later HEC) Gordon River Road gate. There were two tramlines from the mill – one to the right towards Pine Hill and one straight up the floor of Risbys Basin. When the mill opened, they built the first tramway around the back of the mill and out towards Pine Hill. When they finished logging this area they came right back to the mill and put the tramway straight up the Basin from the mill until it got too steep to proceed so they came about half-way back, about one mile from the mill, and put in a spur line to a stringybark knob which E.C. Larkins and Sons were logging on contract. The boys spent two days in the bush and three days in the mill.[39]
Risbys had a tramway from the mill connecting to Mayne’s tramway and used horses to take sawn timber to the railhead at Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald mill used twin circular saws on its Canadian bench.[40]
The success of the Risbys Basin mill was a tribute to the skills of Chummy Larkins who built the mill from scratch. C.A. Risby recalls:
… it was a very primitive mill made from local materials. There was a big frame sawmill in the middle, 8 foot in diameter. The workings of the mill was up in the air and built into the side of a bank, so carts could retrieve sawdust. Behind this were two twin saws, one above the other. There was a three-man bench, all of these made from material on the site.[41]
When the mill was at full capacity it employed 30 men. They included a number of Larkins: Jim, Elwyn and later Terry. Other employees included a faller named Price and Sweeney, who looked after the horses. The team of bushmen included a foreman, two fallers and the ‘horse and shoe man’. The fallers felled the trees with axe and cross-cut saws, then the logs were dragged back to the mill on a network of wooden tramlines. At the mill, the team included the log hauler, docker man, the benchman and the whistle boy. Other workers were involved in building tramways, racking green timber, carrying sawdust and carting the timber to the Fitzgerald railhead.[42]
The New Norfolk Peg Factory
While the major employers in the Tyenna Valley were the sawmills which processed mainly eucalypt timber, an increasing demand for minor species, the so-called ‘scrub woods’, throughout the 1920s provided bush workers with an additional source of income.[43] The species most in demand was sassafras, which was used by the Pioneer Woodware Co. (PWC) in the manufacture of clothes pegs. Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum) is a widespread tree of Tasmanian rainforests but not in eucalypt forests. Its wood is generally light coloured, reasonably soft and easily worked.
The PWC was initially established in Victoria by H.H. Hecht, who arrived in Australia in 1901 as a penniless 19-year old German immigrant and saw an opportunity for the large scale manufacture of wooden ‘dolly’ clothes pegs. He began operations in the Upper Yarra River Valley, but in 1926 transferred his business to New Norfolk and Montrose, a Hobart suburb. In Tasmania, he began making pegs from the sassafras which was available in vast quantities in the valleys of the Derwent tributaries, and unique in not staining clothes. Until the Peg Factory opened, sassafras had little commercial use.[44]
The PWC bought out the sawmill operation and tramlines built by J.M. Mayne at Kallista and, with Risbys, maintained Maynes old tramway. A bush tramline of six miles brought the sassafras from the upper reaches of the Tyenna Valley to the railhead at Fitzgerald. Initially the PWC broke down the timber in a mill about 200 metres from the Fitzgerald railway station, but this was abandoned when logs were sent to a mill at the New Norfolk factory around 1927. In the 1930s, sassafras was supplied by the Kallista Timber Development Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of PWC.[45]
The company’s Tasmanian manager was Allen Walker. Jim Brooks, the foreman, started in 1926 and remained until the 1960s. Some of the sassafras cutters included Bill, Merv and Max Jeffries, Bob Hills and Leo Rilat. Tramway maintenance work was done by the ‘scotties’ or whistle boys of the tramway such as Les Manson, Sam Davey and George Cook. The Kennedys were sassafras contractors logging out of Risbys Basin, on the Risby tramline. Later sassafras workers included Stan Flakemore, Colin Burns and his sons, Reg, Cyril and Merv.
In 1929 Rex Salter returned from a promising apprenticeship in Hobart to help his widowed father, who had been put out of work when Holmes’ Mill closed down, and then broke several ribs falling sassafras. Rex went ‘sassying’ for Arthur’s brother, ‘Thundering’ Bill Jeffries, who swore ‘My Thundering Oath!’ if anything went wrong, as he recalls:
We batched (together) for some years, and during the time I was cutting sassafras, dragging sassafras in, helping load it on trucks, and also driving the log wagons that carted it from the south-western part of the forest… All of [the sassafras] was falled with an axe, and of course in those times, the only sassafras that they would take in the New Norfolk Peg Factory, it had to be clear of black-heart. Of course, now black-heart is worth considerable money… But those times, if you felled a sassafras and it had black-heart in it, it was no use sending it to the peg factory…
Rex drove a black horse named Nobby, who could ‘kick the eye out of a needle.’
I worked for Jeffries, and also at Mayne’s sawmill, (where I) used to trolley timber onto the landing. Logs were taken in on a double-bogey, horse drawn wagon. The wheels used to have very wide treads on them, and flanges, and the railway, or the lines that it used to run on, was timber rails. It was corduroy in between the rails, over valleys and gullies and of course where there was hard rock and that they couldn’t corduroy, but most of it they had to because of the continual walking of the horses. There were two wagons a day used to go in, and it was almost a day’s work to load your timber onto the wagon and take it into the station and then return again after unloading at the railway onto the trucks. And of course the sassafras was loaded the same way… We camped out [in the bush] because we had the horses to look after… You had to feed your horses of a morning before you started work. They were stabled, and you had to feed them and curry them of a night after you knocked off … before you had your own meals. A day would start probably half past five of a morning, and probably end somewhere about half past six at night. Usually in the winter time it was dark when you started and dark when you knocked off.[46]
For entertainment, Rex played cards, ‘crib, five hundred or euchre’ then ‘into the bunk.’
The work itself, Rex recalls, was both dirty and strenuous:
There was usually mud up to your knees… You usually had two horses and … as long as they could get through the undergrowth … they were quite happy… But the main track used to get that way that the horses would be almost up to their hocks in mud, especially after rain. And of course track cutting was expensive because it had to be cleared so your logs didn’t get bound up too much. Because if you got a log fast, all the means that you had was a pole to get it out – or try to get it out – or the horse to probably pull it out from behind a stump or a tree or something like that.
Getting the wagons of sassafras down the steep slopes on the tramways was a particularly delicate business:
[The wagon had] blocks on the wheels to ease it down the hills. We used to usually have five horses, one behind the other … and the brakes were on the wheels of the bogeys of the log trucks, and there’d be one on the front and one on the back and they had very long levers with a double and a single block. You pulled them on by means of a long rope, and of course when you turned to go back with them empty you’d just couple them together and away you’d go… But at the sawmills that I subsequently worked on, they had improved on it considerably. Because the wagon there they used to have a traction engine. An engine out of a Horwood truck and that used to drive the wheels, and instead of horses they used to pull the logs along the same sort of railway line as what they used to have… But they were limited on the hills, but of course they were with the horses too. And if it happened to be wet … they had very very little traction with the tractor and used to have to use gravel and sand and that to get any traction at all.[47]
Gus Cashman arrived in 1930 working in Arthur Jeffries’ store. He later hauled sassafras logs with an Allis Chalmers, the first crawler tractor in the valley.[48] He also drove trucks for his future father-in-law, Bob Hills, carting sassafras logs to the train. His job with the Kallista Co. occurred after a tramway was put into a big patch of sassafras, but the new petrol engine had its problems:
There was one trip there that going down the wagon rope broke. It took off down around the hill and down around… It ran off the rails and bloody logs went everywhere and a fella named Bill Lowe, he was operating at the time, and I was on the rope. Pulling the ropes. This bloody rope. Of course, I fell head over tit… When the rope broke I was on the back. That left me behind and I fell off, and when it broke [Bill Lowe] jumped off, and when we got into the mill… We had to walk in then. He got hurt a bit. I was alright, but he limped into this landing where the mill was, where we had the headquarters of the extension to Kallista.
Workmen were cheap to some employers.
[The boss] said, ‘What happened? Where is the (wagon)?’ Bill Lowe said, ‘Bloody oath, I nearly got killed’. [The boss] said, ‘That don’t bloody well matter. We can get men for a tuppeny ha’penny stamp. What about the bloody cost it is going to cost to get these bloody logs back up and repair the line?’ [Chuckle][49]
Gus’s other cobbers were also week-end footballers, including his brothers-in-law, Stan Murray and Sam Davey (‘a great mate of mine’), Bernie Murray, Tammy Donaghue and Sam Brady.[50]
Following the creation of the Forestry Department in 1921, timber workers cutting on Crown land had to be licensed and pay a small royalty. Men were registered at National Park and later Fitzgerald by a forest ranger. Records of the licences reveal the amount and type of timber being cut in the Tyenna Valley. By the mid-1930s sassafras production appears to have dropped off, and most licences were issued for palings and sleepers. The licence records also show that some timber workers were cutting specific species which required particular skills. Leo Rilat, for example, cut 1,000 su.ft (2.4 m3) of King Billy pine in March 1932, H. Donaghue cut 6,000 su.ft (14.1 m3) of myrtle in October 1932, and Fred Marriott cut 300 su.ft (0.7 m3) of blackwood staves for barrels in November 1933.
Other bushmen cutting specialist timbers included T. Dalco, L. Burns, T. Marriott, Albert Nichols, Halyer Fenton, Tommy Garth, Milton Salter, Paddy Watson, R. Barratt, Percy Statton and Tom Smith. Brothers often worked together (Len and S. Armstrong, and the Murray brothers, Jack, Walter, Sydney, and G. cutting palings and sleepers),while other men worked in teams (T and Ray Marriott working with Clarrie and R.J. Barratt cutting sleepers).[51] Another bushman who split blackwood staves for barrel makers was L.W. (Mick) Duggan. Born at Tunnack in the Midlands, he moved to Fitzgerald to work at a sawmill at the age of sixteen. He later moved over to hauling King Billy pine for fourteen shillings a day:
… gut busting work which didn’t leave much after you’d fed the horse.[52]
Logs were hauled to a landing and then put on tramway trucks for the 11 km trip to the mill.
With Jimmy Miller, Rex Salter also cut King Billy pine along the Gordon River Track:
With a horse – or two horses … you could drag in quite a large billet, and it was usually squared out there into square slabs… The bark and all was taken off, and they used [the slab] in boat building, but mainly in architecture [for] … window sashes… It was a day’s work for one to go out with a couple of horses and drag in two billets.[53]
Often men worked in teams, with particularly large teams cutting wood for fuel; for example, Jack, Reg and Warren Donaghue, G. and C. Milles, R.J. and C. Barratt, Leo Thorne, C. Marriott, Tommy Garth, R.W. Walker and William Rose paid royalties as a group on over 600 tons of fuel timber cut in July 1939.[54] Leo Rilat, skilled with the broad axe, later shaped beams for bridges for ANM.[55]
The 1930s Depression
The Depression caused a slump in demand for timber. The drop in timber exports was blamed on the effects of open-slather competition with imports and the imposition of standard wages by the Arbitration Commission. Llewellyn Irby, the Conservator of Forests, referred to Tasmania’s timber industry as being wiped out by unrestricted foreign imports, as costs of Tasmanian timber could not compete with Scandinavian timber. And, according to the Tasmanian producers, wages imposed by the Arbitration Commission forced Tasmanian sawmillers out of the market. Many mills closed and trade with the Mainland dropped.[56]
Terry Larkins (the son of Chummy Larkins) recalled:
… it was bloody terrible during the Depression. Risbys had this 800,000 su.ft[57] of timber drying and they would ring up Dad for a truck load, but not often. Dad and Jim [his brother] would load the timber onto the wagon, take it to Fitzgerald and load it on the train. Luckily Dad had a big garden, some fowls and a couple of cows… The mill went back into production in 1932.[58]
Many people helped to provide food by hunting. Young men though were hunters by choice as well as by necessity. Cyril Burns, for example, recalls how he would race home after cutting sleepers all week:
… drop my tucker bag, go over to Dad’s farm, get the couple of cows and come home and milk them, and then ride a bike to Arcadian Home with my dogs. Then pick up Reg and Joe Chapman and we’d walk out and stop on Marriotts Lookout or near the Big Eagle till Sunday Morning. Sleep out every weekend shooting wallaby and kangaroo.[59]
As the Depression bit harder, many men earned a living by cutting sleepers and splitting palings.
George and Paddy Watson split palings in the bush and carted them to Robb’s shop at Westerway for ‘horse tucker and our food’ during the hungry ’30s. [60]
The Tasmanian Labor government of Albert Ogilvie attempted to combat the Depression by instigating an extensive program of public works, also known as sustenance work or ‘susso’. In the Tyenna Valley, unemployed men worked on the Lake Fenton Road from 1933, to improve the town water supply and to provide Hobartians with easy access to the ski fields. In August 1933, Darcy Chaplin, former manager of Arthur Jeffries’ sawmill at Tyenna, offered his services to the project as an expert timber man with experience of pulling timber with horses. He had been unemployed since the previous winter, and had to support a wife and five children aged between two and eleven.[61]
Work on the project began with fifty men. Reg Burns first ‘serious’ job was as ‘nipper’ on the new road, boiling the billy for the workers’ tea, and carting sharpened tools in the snow and rain to the men from the blacksmith’s shop, where Jack McDermott and Frank Miller operated the forge. The five o’clock alarm in the valley was the weekly dynamite blast on Friday, heard for miles. The road was completed in July 1937.
Lake Fenton Water Scheme
Another Depression project was the Lake Fenton Water Scheme which resulted in a pipeline between Mount Field and Hobart. This was a distance of 70 kilometres in a straight line, but, given the topography, much further. Clarrie Barratt recalls the experience:
Oh, there was no work around, and the bloke used to mark off a section with pick and shovel, and you more or less had to do it. There was another bloke standing on the bank, and if you wouldn’t do it, you were sacked at a minute’s notice.[62]
As a young lad, Viv Bean of Westerway had an unusual job on the pipeline:
They gave me the job of going down inside the pipe. And you used to have to compo the joint around the steel, so that the welder on the outside of it, he could weld them without the weld going through on the inside. Of course, smoke was coming in really shocking. It nearly cut your breath off at times… We had to be lowered down by rope, a rope around our waist. We’d be dragging a bag of cement to compo the joint. Every time they wanted a shift up, they’d pull you up. You’d try and help yourself at the same time. Of course, you were down there for probably two or three hours, then when you came out … they’d mix up another lot, and if they had another chap there, they’d put him down and give you a sort of a rest for a while. Then you’d have to go back again.[63]
The economic hardships caused by the Depression affected the entire population of the Tyenna Valley. The promise of a new industry based on paper pulp offered a ray of hope for the unemployed, but in 1934 these hardships were compounded by a series of devastating fires.
[1] MacFie, P. H. 1992; ‘Mt Field, the Evolution of Tasmania’s First National Park’, PWH., p55
[2] Mercury, 20/2/1925
[3] Forestry Commission 1/1, 30/6/1922 Archives Office Tasmania
[4] The super foot was a unit for wood volume: 1 super foot = 1 foot × 1 foot × 1 inch, where there are 12 inches in a foot. 1,000 superfeet = 2.36 m3.
[5] Thus with eucalypts at 160 m3/ ha, or 2.2 million m3 for the total area.
[6] Harvested 1913-1918: 70,000 m3 eucalypt, 14,000 m3 sassafras, 450 m3 tallow-wood, 214 m3 myrtle and blackwood.
[7] Tallowwood is the common name of Eucalyptus microcorys (Wikipedia 2012). However, this tree doesn’t grow naturally in Tasmania. The tree referred to as tallow-wood here is Pittosporum bicolor (also cheesewood). (Fred Duncan (Botanist) – pers. comm.)
[8] Lawrence Report, 1922, HA/PP
[9] 42,000 acres = 17,500 hectares.
[10] Mercury, 20/2/1925. House of Assembly Papers No 13, 1925 p8
[11] Wayne Chynoweth Collection; Dept. Labour and Industry Registers
[12] ANMP interview with Claude Marriott, 1995, Cass17A.
[13] ANMP interview with Claude Marriott, 1995, Cass17A.
[14] Larkin’s interview, held in Wayne Chynoweth Collection.
[15] Pybus, Richard, 1988; ‘South Bruny Island – Tasmania: A brief history of its settlement’ compiled by Richard Pybus, p118
[16] Transport Commission 10/18/2191
[17] Transport Commission 10/18/2191
[18] Where they had purchased a timber lease from Cuthbertson and van Eglen.
[19] Graeme-Evans, Alexander L., 1996; ‘Against the Odds, Risbys – Tasmanian Timber Pioneers 1826-1995’, Tasbook Publishing, Hobart, p194
[20] ‘Florentine Valley Wood Pulp and Paper Industry Bill’ – Report of Proceedings of Joint Select Committee – Parliament House, Hobart – Tas Archives AA 32/1 – June 16, 1932 – p C 59.
[21] Department of Labour and Industry Registers, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office
[22] Florentine Valley Wood Pulp and Paper Industry Bill – Report of Proceedings of Joint Select Committee – Parliament House, Hobart. AA 32/1 p 102
[23] Approximately 118 m3.
[24] Cited in MacFie, P. H. 1992; ‘Mt Field, the Evolution of Tasmania’s First National Park’, PWH
[25] Public Works Department 263/25, Tramway To Gourlay Pty Ltd, Sawmill, Fitzgerald RCCAAD
[26] Larkins, Wayne Chynoweth Collection
[27] ANMP interview with Claude Marriott, 1995, Cass17A.
[28] The Murray brothers (formerly of Bruny Island) built the Kallista Spur Line and bridge in 1941 on Nichols Spur. The others then left, while Walter stayed as the ‘saw doctor’.
[29] The Murray brothers gained a reputation as bushmen and sportsmen at Geeveston and Fitzgerald. For 30 years they dominated the double-handed sawing competition in the state. In 1911 they beat all comers at Geeveston to win the 24 inch log world championship. (Pybus, Richard. ‘South Bruny Island – Tasmania: a brief history of its settlement.’ 1988, p91)
[30] ANMP interview with Claude Marriott, 1995, Cass17A.
[31] ANMP interview with Claude Marriott, 1995, Cass17A.
[32] Mayne had a slab tramway from his mill to the Fitzgerald railway station using horses to haul the sawn timber. Risby’s Mill later had a tramway connecting onto Mayne’s tramway just after it crossed the Mt Field Timber Company’s tramway to head their respective ways. Mt Field Timber Co.’s spar tramway on the left, and Mayne’s slab tramway on the right, ran parallel all the way from Fitzgerald railway station to about a mile out of Maydena, just before the ‘rocky cutting’ where they crossed over. The Mt Field Timber Company’s wooden tram line ran for 5.75 miles along the western branch of the Russell Falls River toward the Florentine Valley and Gordon Gap. The Pioneer Woodware Company tramway ran southwest for about 6.25 miles. The Tasmanian Government Railway later followed the Mayne line closely for the branch line to Kallista,’ (Larkin, Wayne Chynoweth Collection.) Mayne’s Mill was bought out by the Pioneer Woodware Company, owners of the peg factory at New Norfolk, around 1927.
[33] Mercury 13/7/1926, p2
[34] World, 21/12/1922, quoted in Tasmanian Forestry Commission 34, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office
[35] Department of Labour & Industry Records 1921-4, Wayne Chynoweth Collection
[36] McAulay Papers, NS 374/10, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office
[37] McAulay Papers, NS 374/10, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office
[38] Wayne Chynoweth Collection, notes
[39] When the 1934 fires went through, stranding the Beyers hauler, it was retrieved and used at Risby’s Brown Mountain Mill.
[40] Larkins, Wayne Chynoweth Collection, 1992
[41] Wayne Chynoweth Collection
[42] Wayne Chynoweth Collection
[43] Mercury, 9/3/1924
[44] Herald, 22/3/1966, p7. Apart from pegs, Hecht’s merchant house also made the ‘Jex’ pot scourers. On his death, many charities benefited, including the Salvation Army.
[45] Mercury, 29/12/1933, p7 and 31/1/1934, p5
[46] ANMP interview with Rex Salter, 1996, Cass24.
[47] ANMP interview with Rex Salter, 1996, Cass24.
[48] The sassafras crew consisted of ‘Halyer Fenton, Jeff Miller (he was the boss fella), the Duggans – three or four of the Duggan brothers, myself, Bill Lowe and Splinter Kennedy’ (ANMP interview with Gus Cashman)
[49] ANMP interview with Gus Cashman, 1996, Cass25.
[50] All became ANM employees.
[51] From 1922 to 1924 the bushmen included D and W McDonald, W.A. Belcher, W, E, and J McDermott, George Harris, John Cowen, Ron Marriott, John Garth, Fred Fisher, J Wilson, W and H Batchelor, J Lee. John Burnley and Percy Statton. Other bushmen who became ANM employees were T Dalco, L Burns, T Marriott, Albert Nichols, Halyer Fenton, Tommy Garth, Milton Salter, Leo Rilat, Paddy Watson, H Donaghue, R Barratt and Tom Smith.
[52] ANM Log
[53] ANMP interview with Rex Salter, 1996, Cass24.
[54] A Marriott and L Fisher cut 5,700 and 1,700 super feet of palings that year. In 1926, T Dalco, (1,700), Percy Statton (3,500, 6,500 and 10,500), J Jamieson (3,500), were typical figures for paling cutters. In 1927 C Daly and R Reid cut 1,650 and 3,000, F Fisher and E Batchelor 8,000 sassafras and 1,800 super feet of palings. In 1929, H O’Donahoo and L Burns cut 9,000 sleepers, A.J. Jeffries cut 2,346 super feet of blackwood, 3,100 palings, 6,000 martello, and 2,859 of sassafras. In 1930, E Sharpe cut 6,700 super feet of sassafras, R Lord 8,000 super feet of eucalypt, A.J. Jeffries 193,361 (sic) of eucalypt, A Marriott 15,602 super feet of sassafras, and H O’Donahoo 12,000 super feet of sassafras. (Tasmanian Forestry Department 33/3, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office.)
[55] Other registered bushmen in the 1920s who later worked for ANM included T Dalco, L Burns, T Marriott, Albert Nichols, Halyer Fenton, Tommy Garth, Milton Salter, Leo (Lionel) Rilat, Paddy Watson, H Donaghue, R Barratt, Tom Smith, H.A. and J.R. Salter, S and L Armstrong, W Chaplin, C and R Burns and A Blackwell
[56] Mercury, 10/3/1924
[57] 800,000 super feet = 1900 m3.
[58] Wayne Chynoweth Collection
[59] ANMP interview with Cyril Burns, 1995, Cass23B.
[60] Bracketed license holders indicate men working in teams, T and R Marriott, H Harris and W Lorkin, F Rowe and T Cowen, H.A. and J.R. Salter, Halyer Fenton and Albert Nichols, D and E Marriott, Leo Rilat and Albert Nichols. Brothers worked together like S and L Armstrong, J and B Dillon, G. D. and R Freeman, H.J. and R Headlam. On occasions groups of workers combined in one team; G Mille, F Rose, G Harris, L Armstrong and M Salter producing 22,100 palings, were one team, working for Jeffries, while the Murray brothers (J, W, S and G) producing 5,290 palings and 900 sleepers, were another. Sleeper cutters such as T Smith, E Farrow and J Salter, (over 700 sleepers) had royalties paid by the Tasmanian Government Railways. T and R Marriott teamed with R.J. and C Barratt cutting 356 sleepers, while M.W. Hudson and Leo Rilat cut over 6,000 sleepers. Pencilled notes indicate other teams, like S Armstrong and A Hutchins, Alf, and S Williams and J Garth were working for the Kallista Timber Co.
[61] MacFie, P. H. 1992; ‘Mt Field, the Evolution of Tasmania’s First National Park’, PWH
[62] ANMP interview with Clarrie Barratt, 1995, Cass02B.
[63] ANMP interview with Viv Bean, 1995, Cass12.