Monthly Archives: October 2022

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Forests Commission ran a large unemployment program of firebreak slashing, building roads, erecting firetowers, silvicultural thinning, firewood cutting, weed spraying, soil erosion works and rabbit control. Importantly, most of the work was in country areas. By 1935-36 almost 9000 men were employed for periods of up toContinue reading “Boys Camps.”

The humble timber pallet (or, less typically, a plastic or metal one) has at some time or another, probably carried almost every type of object in the world. For a mostly unseen and unnoticed item, pallets are everywhere, and there are said to be billions of them circulating through the global supply chain. While thereContinue reading “CHEP Pallets.”

John Klunder Jensen was born in Bendigo in 1884 but had to leave school at the age of 11 to find work following the early death of his father in 1895. He moved to Melbourne in 1898 and in 1900 took a job as a junior messenger boy in the Defence Department’s ordnance stores branchContinue reading “Sir John Jensen.”

Free e-book now available. Forty years ago, south eastern Australia was in the middle of a prolonged drought and facing a perilous bushfire season. A new ebook provides a detailed account of the 1982-83 bushfire season from a Victorian forester’s perspective. And while the bushfire season is best remembered for those on Ash Wednesday onContinue reading “The 1982-83 Victorian Bushfire Season, including Ash Wednesday – 16 February 1983.“

Harvesting of various wattle species began in Victoria and southern NSW around the time of the gold rush in the 1850s. Black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) is a small, fast-growing, leguminous tree and was highly prized for tanning leather. The tannin is also used to produce waterproof adhesives in reconstituted wood products. Bark was stripped from the wattlesContinue reading “Watle bark stripping.”