Particleboard was developed in Germany in the late 1940s and introduced to Australia in 1957 when Coreboard Ltd. (later purchased by Softwood Holdings Ltd.) established a plant at Mt. Gambier.

The Coreboard plant created a much-needed market for early thinnings from the rapidly expanding radiata pine plantations as well as for sawn waste.

Before mechanisation, the 6-foot timber billets were hand cut, stacked in the plantation in heaps and extracted to the roadside before loading and transport.

At the factory, the bark was then removed, and the logs converted into thin flakes which were dried, mixed with urea-formaldehyde resin and then continuously extruded and pressed through a heated die.

A second plant was built in 1960 at Oberon in NSW by Pyneboard Pty. Ltd., a subsidiary of Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR).

The Oberon plant used an improved process which formed the board onto an endless steel wire mesh, cut it into lengths and then pressed it between heated platens.

Australian Paper Manufacturers (APM), based in Gippsland and operator of the major pulp mill at Maryvale, also owned a substantial pine plantation estate and acquired a 50% share in the Oberon plant in 1964.

The acquisition led to another Pyneboard factory, jointly owned by CSR and APM, being established at Rosedale with production commencing in 1964. But because of its small size, the factory became unprofitable and was closed at the end of 1978.

The Rosedale factory was subsequently used as a leather tanning works and then to manufacture industrial cable.

https://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/244.html

Note – Pyneboard is a tradename and is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Pineboard.

The “Normal Forest” is a theoretical condition where the growing stock of trees has a more or less even series of age classes, with an even spread of tree sizes, with full stocking on each site growing with normal increments (AKA –  The Trinity of Norms).

The idea of the normal forest emerged in the 1800s in Germany as a simplified mathematical framework for forest management, particularly to produce timber.  It works best for single aged stands rather than complex multiple aged forests.

For example, in a hypothetical 100-ha forest, where each age class is equally represented in 1ha plots from 0-100 years, and each hectare is fully stocked and grows normally at 1 m3/ha/year, then each plot will carry 100 m3 of timber at age 100. Then if the harvesting rotation is 100 years, a mature 1 ha plot can be cut each year and then replanted, which will yield 100 m3 per year in perpetuity.

A normal forest serves as a doctrine of faith that allows for a balance of growth that matches the area harvested and creates an even and sustained yield of timber. It also serves as a standard to which actual forests can be compared.

The normal forest is possible in managed short-rotation softwood plantations but is not found in Australian native forests, particularly when they have either been heavily harvested in the past, like the Wombat State Forest during the gold rush, or burned by extensive bushfires, such as the ash forests in the Central Highlands which have large stands of uniform, single-aged, 1939 and 1983 regrowth.

Masonite is an engineered panel board that was patented in 1924 by American inventor William H. Mason. It is made by steam pressurising wood chips followed by explosive decompression through a “Mason Gun”. The wood fibres are then passed through an endless wire mesh to be pressed and dried into thin rigid sheets. The large dimensioned panels use the wood’s natural lignin to bond everything together without artificial glues.

The Masonite Corporation (Australia) Ltd. opened a plant in 1938 at Raymond Terrace in NSW and used chips from local eucalypts.

Meanwhile in Victoria, an agreement was reached with Australian Paper Manufactures (APM) to build a major pulp and paper plant at Maryvale in the Latrobe Valley under a Legislated Supply Agreement. The first intake of pulpwood from State forests was in October 1937.

Anticipating an increase in post-war demand for woodchips for the manufacture of pulp and fibre board like Masonite, the Forests Commission began a major resource inventory across State forests in the early 1950s.

A Wood Supply Agreement with the Masonite Corporation soon followed in 1955 to harvest pulpwood (other than Ash species) from forests in the southern part of the Upper Goulburn River catchment to feed a Masonite and hardboard plant.

The company was using a new dry-forming process developed by the US Masonite Corporation to produce a hardboard which was smooth on both sides.

The company purchased the works area that had been used to build the Eildon dam to manufacture the wallboard, but it proved unsuccessful due to technical reasons.

The Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) took over the Australian operations of the Masonite Corporation in 1959 and closed the Eildon plant.

A new agreement was then reached between the Forests Commission and CSR to supply 70,000 tonnes of pulpwood from the Wombat State Forest for a new hardboard plant at Bacchus Marsh using the Asplund defibration process on eucalypt wood. Production began in 1961. The company also had a factory at Mitcham.

Wood was also supplied by students from the Forestry School at Creswick. Eight-foot billets were hand-cut and split with axes then stacked in the school’s demonstration forest. A cartage contractor then picked up the wood from the bush and delivered it to Bacchus Marsh.  After costs were paid, the surplus cash went into the school sports fund

Hardboard made from eucalypts proved to have excellent strength properties, superior to those of similar products based on softwoods, and for a time a significant part of the local production was exported.

However, in 1999, the Bacchus Marsh plant finally closed, and CSR moved its operations to Queensland.

Masonite has fallen from favour but is still commonly used as an affordable flooring underlay and furniture backing. But it best used indoors because, without treatment, it absorbs water which causes the boards to swell and blister.

https://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/242.html

Who to believe?

These two sketches by famous colonial artist Nicholas Chevalier are clearly the same and are from reputable sources.

One copy is from the Victorian State Library with the caption “McMillan’s party clearing road to Wood’s Point” and was published by David Syme on 25 May 1864.

The other copy is from the National Library and there is handwriting on the sketch – “Splitters in the Dandenong Ranges”. The library catalogue says it was a wood engraving exhibited by the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, 1873.

If I had to pick, and judging by the hills in the background, I think it’s more likely the Road to Woods Point. What do others think?

Australian Paper Manufacturers (APM) operated a logging camp in the Boola Boola State Forest, north of the Latrobe Valley, from 1947 until August 1958.

It was situated near W11 track on the road to Walhalla.

Workers harvested mixed species pulpwood for the Maryvale Mill to make Kraft paper when the ash salvage program following the 1939 bushfires in the Central Highlands was winding down.

This unusual panorama image of the Boola Camp in 1951 is from Bernie MacManus and has been enhanced to make it sharper.

This was found in the shed at Powelltown recently.

The hammer has a brand on one side and a magnetic face on the other to pick up the metal numbered tags that are held inside the tubular magazine and then belt them into the end of logs.

Google tells me that system was developed by Latschbacher, and the instructions are in German.

I must say I have never seen one before.

I guess it belonged to VicForests. Any ideas ?

My photo has been edited to remove the background and make the hammer clearer.

Timber pricing evolved over more than 150 years, from a rudimentary licensing system which gave unrestricted access to the forest for very little payment, through to current market pricing, involving competitive processes and mill door sales. The evolution of pricing was in four distinct phases.

Licence system – this entirely inadequate scheme applied to timber sales from the mid-1800s until the early 1900s. A small fee was paid which gave the holder unrestricted and mostly unsupervised access to the forest to cut and remove timber. The system resulted in excessive wastage and sometimes large trees were cut and left on the forest floor. Wastage by sleeper cutters and timber splitters were the constant frustration of the first Forests Conservator, George Perrin. The licence system also produced a very poor financial return to the Crown.

Berthold Ribbentrop reported in 1896 on the poor state of Victoria’s forests, and observed…

The present licence system, which permits a scramble for the forest produce so long as it can be found anywhere, is at the bottom of much of the disorder which exists.

He also noted that…

The income from the forests is ridiculously small.

Ribbentrop’s scathing report prompted a Royal Commission between 1897 and 1901 into the destruction of Victoria’s forests.

Report Number 10 – “Forest Royalties and the Royalty System”, published in June 1900, recommended applying  a “royalty” for timber, together with improved regulation of the quantity of timber harvested.

Royalty payments – the 1897-1901 Royal Commission highlighted the shortcomings of Victoria’s timber sales with the stark example of a sawmiller from Echuca who paid a paltry  £31 for 1,600 logs from the Barmah Forest, but they would have attracted a royalty of £700 if cut just over the border in New South Wales.

The Government changed the system, and from the early 1900s, timber royalty was charged on logs from Victoria’s  State forest.

But the royalty was charged on the quantity of sawn timber produced from a log rather than the input volume. Royalty payments relied on sawmillers honestly self-reporting their production and this approach did little to reduce timber wastage, or trees left in the forest.

The State Forest Department obviously favoured a sales system based on input log volume, measured in the forest or as they were received at the mill.

For many years, the Department unsuccessfully sought change, but unsurprisingly there was vocal opposition from sawmillers together with intense lobbying of their parliamentary representatives.

It took until the 1930s before the system was changed and royalty payments were based on input log volume.

The shift resulted in a 12-fold increase in royalty payments from £50,845 in 1930, to £645,793 in 1950.

Half of this revenue was retained by the FCV in its Forestry Trust Fund for on-ground works in the forests.

Royalty Equation System (RES) – was introduced on 1 January 1950, during the height of the post-war housing boom. At the time, the timber industry was progressively being moved eastwards after the completion of the 1939 salvage in the Central Highlands.

The RES was a significant step, and it aimed to overcome cost disadvantages for more distant sawmills and to “equalise” the costs of sawing and transporting base-grade scantling timber to three marketing zones, including Melbourne.

Individual sawmiller rates were built-up from a base royalty known as the Standard Mill Formula (SMF).

Divergence factors were applied to allow for differences in the value of the timber produced from each grade of logs. The haulage distances were measured for different classes of forest road from the bush to the mills and then the costs of transport from the mill to markets was factored in, with a preference given for rail transport to Melbourne, where available. A residue allowance was applied for the sale of sawdust and chips.

Price increases were set within the Government’s fee and charges guidelines, leading to increases generally below the CPI.

The equitable system was long lasting and was initially retained in the Timber Industry Strategy (TIS) in 1986.

The RES was suitable for its time during the post-war housing boom, but over time it became apparent that it failed to reflect the State Government’s commercial enterprise or ensure that the revenue at least covered the costs of producing the logs.

Market Pricing – was a longer-term commitment by the Government in the Timber Industry Strategy in 1986.

It aimed to generate at least a 4% return on the invested funds and introduction of commercial accounts for the State’s publicly owned forest resources.

The new Victorian Plantations Corporation (VPC) introduced full market pricing for softwood logs from 1993 during individual negotiations for its established supply agreements, while VicForests introduced a similar system for hardwoods from 2004. VicForests also introduced “mill door” sales which covered the full costs of its own operations, plus the costs of harvesting and haulage.

David Williams (2020) Royalty Equation System.

https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/activities1/producing/461-royalty-equation-system.html

David Williams (2020) Log Pricing in Victoria

https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/activities1/producing/460-timber-pricing.html

The 1986 Timber industry Strategy (TIS) required hardwood sawlogs to be licenced and allocated to the highest value end use.

In general, each tree harvested produces a range of wood products from high grade sawlogs through to material only suitable for pulpwood.

Once felled, logs were to be crosscut in such a way as to produce the largest volume of the highest-grade products.

In 1988, new hardwood sawlog grades were introduced. They replaced local sawlog standards which varied across the state for different forest types and ages.

The new log grades ranged from Adown to E, and were defined by several features such as:

• tree species – e.g. ash, mixed species, red gum.
• volume dimensions – centre diameter (under bark) and log length.
• small logs less than 40 cm in diameter were classified as D class. A lower class of E grade logs was introduced later.
• number of defective quarters with visible external faults such as branch stubs, swellings, gum veins, stain, sloping grain and dry sides.
• amount of pipe defect (rotten or absent wood from the centre of the log).
• termites and ambrosia infestation could reject a log or reduce its grade.

A new log grading card enabled a quick visual assessment and judgement of defects in the bush.

Sawlogs were then measured, graded, recorded and branded (or marked with plastic barcodes) by harvesting contractors or forest officers before being dispatched to sawmills.

E grade logs – the lowest grade of sawlog and often used for pallets, as well as pulpwood logs that were not sawlog quality, were usually sold by weight and are not manually measured with a tape.

A statewide audit of log grading was undertaken in 1996. Overall, the results were good, but there was some slippage between grades and improvements were required. As a result, a random sample check was made of all logs and pulpwood.

VicForests – Utilisation Procedures

https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/495cb1/contentassets/68abd56072fd455aadc640a48db4041d/vicforests_attachment_1.pdf

Sphagnum moss is highly absorbent and can hold up to 20 times its weight in water.

It is widely used in horticulture as a soil conditioner and for growing orchids, and terrariums, as well as for lining hanging baskets.

In Victoria, it was once harvested from State forests, mostly in the Central Highlands.

In the 1970s, Stan Storrie was a careful harvester of moss. He was able to harvest the moss repeatedly, and he never removed it all, but carefully left a healthy sward to thicken up again.

Sometimes he would bring his harvest past the FCV East Warburton Office.  A paper trail was established and royalty paid.

However, the moss sold commercially in Australian garden centres is now typically farmed and imported from New Zealand.

Photos: Gregor Wallace – 1973.

The Forests Commission purchased two Bedford RLHS cab/chassis trucks that were imported into Australia from England in January 1959.

John Phillips and Syd Bloxidge were flown to Sydney by GV Clarke Motors to drive the vehicles back to Melbourne.

They were assembled as tip trucks for use on the Tamboritha Road project north of Heyfield.

Based on their success, additional trucks were purchased and fabricated into FCV fire tankers.

They were designed using the configuration of the earlier ex-military Blitz tankers, with a rectangular tray-mounted water tank and a manually operated hose reel attached to the tank lid. Grab rails were installed along each side of the tray.

The water tank had three connecting compartments providing a total capacity of 600 gallons.

The Howard pump engine equipped with a rope start could be temperamental and difficult to start and was later replaced with an electric start 7 HP Wisconsin Gaam 30B pump.

This example of a Bedford bullnose tanker from Casterton is refilling at the Stawell fire #16 in March 1964. The truck was notable for having a forward-opening windscreen. Les Twigg was driving but the other two people are unknown.

Photo: Gregor Wallace Collection.

During the late 1960s, recreation and conservation on State forest was receiving greater community focus.  A key moment for the Forests Commission came in August 1970, then under the new chairmanship of Dr Frank Moulds, with the creation of the Forest Environment Branch.

This initiative was a first for any Australian Forest Service, and its brief soon widened. By 1971, it became the Forest Environment and Recreation (FEAR) Branch, firstly under the stewardship of Athol Hodgson and later Stuart Calder.

In January 1971, Tom Morrison became one of the founding members of FEAR which was based at Treasury Place in Melbourne.

They say, “apples don’t fall far from the tree” and there seems little doubt that Tom was strongly influenced by his father, Philip Crosbie Morrison, the legendary naturalist, educator, journalist, broadcaster and conservationist.

In 1973 a colour film entitled “The Living Forest” was released. The Forests Commission sponsored the film and Tom provided technical direction with support from other FEAR Branch staff including Kester Baines, Paul Sholly and Kris Lysenko.

The film was produced by the talented Ken Widdowson from Educational Media Australia, while David Morgan from the Melbourne College of Education provided advice, and professional cinemaphotographer, David Cork, was engaged to make the short educational film.

The 22-minute film portrays, beautifully for its time, Victoria’s forests and woodlands including its flora, fauna, water, soils, recreation and tourism use, fire management and economic values, including the timber industry. 

The film also briefly examines the Forests Commission’s “multiple use” philosophy and explored the importance of balancing the environmental and economic demands that community’s make on State forests.

Some of the footage for The Living Forest was taken in April 1973 at East Warburton where forester, Gregor Wallace, was posted. The artful film making was near Mt Donna Buang on a roadside in the head of Myrtle Creek, looking down to Yarra Junction and Millgrove. It turned into a family affair with Gregor’s wife Norma, their daughter Kerryn, and even their personal Holden car appearing in the film.

At one point, the script required rain dripping from leaves, but it was a sunny and warm day, so Gregor and Kester used a knapsack full of water as a prop to create the desired effect. A reminder maybe not to believe everything you see in a film, not even in a government documentary.

Gregor also reminisces –

On another day the FEAR Branch needed a sequence with a family arriving in their car at a survey point in the forest and being greeted by a forester; no speaking parts required with the narrator of the film doing all of the persuasion stuff. A convenient spot was found on the Woods Point Road at Starvation Creek.  I was the smart young forester and was filmed welcoming Tom Morrison, driving my car, with my wife in the passenger front seat, and my daughter looking out of a rear window.  Well did I ask just what was going on !!!!!

These few seconds in the film, near the end, took half a day to make and provided a good bit of amusement. I think that this was Tom’s only appearance in the film.

A closing piece in the film is of a group, well a small crowd really, of young folk at O’Brien’s Crossing on the Lerderderg River, downstream from Blackwood. I understand that Tom organised a picnic day and a small bus load of Head Office staff and their families as the film “extras”.

Mike Wade is the young forester with the stereoscope and aerial photographs and chinagraph pencil on the Land Rover bonnet. He is with Les Lasham picking the line for a new walking track. 

Max Roker is the man with the yellow tree marking paint and taking a DHBOB or girth measurement.

Norma gets a gig with binoculars and a distant view.

I think that a lot of the bird and animal shots were done at Healesville Sanctuary.

This film was the last in the noble tradition of public education that gave us ‘Calling VL3AA’, ‘Harvest of the Hills’, and all of those others that were taken on the road and shown in country halls and schools.

The film was innovative for its time and proved popular with a very strong demand for showings from schools and other groups.

These photos were taken in April and May 1973 and are from the amazing archives of Gregor Wallace.

The Living Forest – 1973.

The first personal bushfire survival shelter in Australia was developed by the CSIRO in 1958.

The main issues to overcome were protection from radiant heat, avoiding smoke and any toxic fumes from the tent materials, and being able to breath cool air.

The bell-shaped tent was made of laminated aluminium foil and was tested in January 1959 on the flank of a 100,000-acre fire in East Gippsland, but the formaldehyde adhesive produced toxic fumes.

However, the results were promising enough to continue with testing a second A-frame design in 1959 using a resin rubber adhesive.

Around the same time, the North Americans also began developing a fire shelter and the two countries collaborated closely.

The Forests Commission continued to experiment with shelters as late as 1962 at Trentham but decided not to adopt them.

The current American shelters are designed to be deployed within 30 seconds or less by removing from them from their carry bag and shaking them to expand the tent outward. The firefighter then climbs inside and holds it down with their arms, knees and feet to keep the flames and hot air out

The shelters are intended as a last resort of defence and are sometimes referred to as “shake and bakes”.

Personal fire shelters are mandatory equipment in America and while many lives have been saved there have also been many fatalities using the tents.

In 2013, 19 firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hotshots died in the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona after deploying shelters when flames overtook them in a steep canyon.

The idea occasional resurfaces in Australia but the use of bushfire shelters for personal protection has not been adopted. Agencies instead preferring other on-ground tactics to minimise firefighters’ exposure to danger.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hs-2VzEGXRueMFpavfYxR7OoFagOJ8vW/view

The idea of an Aerial Drip Torch (ADT) was first conceived in Canada in the 1970s by the legendary forester, firefighter and inventor, John Muraro.

The drip torch was further developed in 1982 by the New Zealand Forest Service and became known as the Ashley Aphid Helitorch. 

In February 1987, Forestry Tasmania acquired one of the NZ machines and modified it to meet Australian aviation safety standards.  Known as the “Red Dragon” it consisted of a large 135-litre tank containing jellied petrol, a displacement pump, propane ignition system, burner nozzle and fire extinguisher system.

A commercial gelling agent such as Flash-21 was used to thicken unleaded petrol to form a sticky blob-like consistency that dripped and ignited safely without separating. The gelling agent is not made with the same ingredients as napalm as is commonly claimed.

Building on the Tasmanian experience, two Yellow Dragons (ADT-1 & ADT-2) were designed and fabricated at the North Altona workshops by Rocky Marsden in the early 1990s.  They were developed in conjunction with the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia.

The dragons on the side of the tanks were painted by Tony Bramwell who was a signwriter and good friend of Rocky Marsden. He now teaches art at Werribee.

In Autumn 1991, the Yellow Dragon was first trialled on regeneration slash burns at Erica and Swifts Creek. It had a dry weight of 160 kg and a capacity of 130 litres which provided about an hour of operations. It was slung about 7 m beneath a light helicopter. 

The incendiary machines proved successful, so a third Dragon called Lucifer or “Lucy” was introduced in 1998. It had a larger capacity 200 litre plastic tank but was much lighter with a dry weight of only 68 kg.

The design and safety features of the Aerial Drip Torches continued to evolve and their use for burning operations has now become routine.  DEECA/FFMVic currently operates seven machines (6 x 200L and 1 x 400L) – but none have names given to them nowadays.

Over time, all three of the original Dragons were thought to have gone missing, but ADT-1 is now safely in a storage rack at North Altona, while ADT-2 was found at Avalon Airport – a bit worse for wear – and will return to its rightful place in the North Altona museum. The fate of Lucy remains a mystery, but it is believed she was disposed of many years ago.

The Forests Commission and its successors have continuously encouraged bushfire research and innovation. In 1946 a large parcel of industrial land was purchased at North Altona as a fire equipment cache and workshop.

Over the decades, much of Australia’s pioneering fire equipment development was led by some very clever and dedicated inventors at North Altona, often in collaboration with other state and international forestry and bushfire authorities.

The Altona workshop became a hotbed of new technological thingumajigs… a marvellous blend of Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders coupled with Wallace and Gromit’s madcap contraptions… an exhilarating place where lots of gizmos were invented and tested… mostly with astounding results… but nearly always with some head-scratching frustrations… and thankfully not too much explosive mayhem.

The Dragons are just one small example, but the future of in-house fire equipment development at North Altona is currently under a cloud.

https://library.dbca.wa.gov.au/FullTextFiles/000848.pdf

https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/fire-sidebar/fire-aviation/348-aerial-ignition.html#aerial-drip-torches

A single mountain ash log on Geoff McPhee’s truck at the FCV East Warburton checking station.

5004 super feet – Hoppus (15 m3).

December 1970.

Photo: Gregor Wallace collection

At many places across the State forests of the Central Highlands there were large and dense stands of silver wattle (Acacia dealbata) which had replaced the original mountain ash (E. regnans) forests because of repeated bushfires in 1926, 1932 and 1939.

By the early 1970s, silvicultural knowledge had grown after the pioneering work by foresters like Jack Gillespie, and the methods of regeneration by clearing of overstorey, burning of slash and seeding or planting were well known, but the problem of reforesting sites in dense growth of wattle remained.

Firstly, a fixed-wing aircraft flying from Sumner Spur was used to spray chemical herbicide mixed with diesel to kill the wattle.

Two FCV bulldozers then dragged heavy chains to bring down the dead stems, which was followed by a spectacular slash burn to prepare the site.

But burning the wattle slash hot enough to create a receptive seed bed was a problem.

Unlike Fuel Reduction Burning (FRB), which required a slow moving and low intensity fire, slash burning required a very hot fire, usually in late summer to early autumn when there was still a risk of bushfires.

One solution to reduce the risk was to burn at night when the temperature was falling, the relative humidity was rising, and the wind had dropped off.

The area to be burnt was prepared by surrounding it with a solid earth break and a road to provide access for vehicles and tankers.

It required great skill, as well as a bit of courage, to light these burns and choose the moment of ignition. The wattle slash fuels needed to be very dry (<10% moisture content) but for the adjoining  areas to be wetter (preferably >20%) to create a fuel moisture differential.  A bit of light rain in the days before the burn was a big help.

High intensity slash burns are risky, and the final decision was made late on the day by the District Forester.

The burn was lit on dusk by crews with drip torches, beginning in the centre to develop a strong convection column to draw the hot fire inwards. More fire was then added around the perimeter until the whole thing was alight.

As the fire died down crews could then relax, and at around midnight there was often a convivial cook-up around a small campfire. A skeleton crew remained until dawn.

In a few days an aircraft would spread coated eucalypt seed on the receptive seedbed to regenerate a new forest.

Burning at night was once common but seems rare these days.

These amazing photos are from the Gregor Wallace collection and were taken at a night slash burn on Britannia Range near Powelltown on 4 March 1970.

Sumner Spur Airstrip – Powelltown.

Librarian, Dr Fiannuala Morgan, recently used historical newspaper records held in Trove to reconstruct and map bushfire occurrence from 1850 to 1900.

The major bushfires in colonial Victoria in 1851 and 1898 are well known but there is not much information for the periods in between.

Trove holds millions of digitised pages from old newspapers and magazines, but reporting and sorting is messy.

A key word search of Trove found about 120,000 articles about bushfires between 1850 and 1900.

By applying Named Entity Recognition (NER) to the results, it was often possible to map the location of the bushfire based on its proximity to a place name.

The research highlights how bushfires shaped Victoria’s 19th century, and how they changed over time.

Following the gold rush of the 1850s, the Victorian government  opened up large areas of crown land for selection. Much of the land was heavily forested and difficult to access, especially in Gippsland. The freehold land was then cleared and converted into agricultural or pastoral properties mainly with backbreaking toil and fire.

There are still gaps in the historical data and many bushfires went unreported because they were common and  not newsworthy. Bushfires on remote State forests were also probably not reported.

This amazing interactive map shows where and how often bushfires occurred across the colonies over fifty years, but details on fire severity or size require consulting the original newspaper stories.

https://lab.slv.vic.gov.au/articles/colonial-bushfires-fiannuala-morgan

It’s been said many times before, that internationally, south-eastern Australia is considered one of the three most fire-prone landscapes on Earth. The other places being southern California and the southern Mediterranean.

Bushfires have undoubtedly always been a feature of Australian summers. In an average year, between 600 and 1000 bushfires occur in Victoria’s National Parks and State forests, which burn about 110,000 hectares, with a large proportion being in the vast forests of Gippsland and north-eastern Victoria.

Most of the bushfires on State forests and National Parks in Gippsland were small and often started by lightning.

Early detection combined with rapid and determined first attack to keep bushfires small. In most cases, first attack is successful, but the story rarely makes the media.

I was based in Gippsland as the Senior Forester from 1994, and for me, the tempo, size and severity of bushfires seemed to intensify from the late 1990s following the Caledonia fire.

In combination with its many bushfires, floods and storm events, Gippsland became jokingly known as “Disaster Disneyland”.

It also seemed that the fire seasons started earlier and lasted longer, with underlying drought and prolonged dryness of the bush and lower relative humidity, particularly at night, being a key factor.

Over time, the terms “mega-fire” and “campaign-fire” became part of the common language of foresters and firefighters. 

There were all sorts of theories and allegations advanced to explain the massive and long running campaign bushfires that Victoria experienced beginning from the late 1990s. They ranged from –

• budget and staff cutbacks.
• loss of experienced firefighting staff in the field.
• procrastination, risk aversion and fear of litigation.
• a subtle shift from prevention to suppression.
• lack of fuel reduction burning.
• drought & climate change.
• political interference.

Some of this was partly true, but some was just rubbish, and the Department and the staff came in for all sorts of harsh and unreasonable criticism from politicians, the media, the community and the many armchair experts. Attacks on social media became relentless and toxic…

The answers are never simple and one dimensional as many would hope or claim. Climate Change being the most convenient and simplistic explanation.

Recurring bushfires.

Over the last century, Gippsland experienced major bushfires on Black Thursday – 1926, Black Friday – 1939 and Yallourn – February 1944. The latter two, resulting in groundbreaking Royal Commissions by Judge Stretton.

More recently, over the last 60 years, major fires occurred in March 1965, October – 1980,  Ash Wednesday – 1983, Caledonia River – 1998, alpine fires – 2002-03, Dutson bombing range – 2004, more alpine fires 2005-06 & 2006-07, Black Saturday – 2009, Aberfeldy/Seaton – 2013, Jack River – 2014, Rosedale – 2019, Black Summer 2019-20, Loch Sport – 2023 and Dargo – 2026. And there were many others too…

Some parts of the bush in eastern Victoria were burnt severely and repeatedly which had major environmental consequences, particularly for susceptible ecosystems like snow gum woodlands, rainforests, alpine ash and mountain ash forests. About 276,000 ha was burnt multiple times since 2000, and forest stability was undoubtedly compromised.

Known as the Tolerable Fire Interval (TFI), some species and forest types require a relatively short inter fire period, or frequent burning, whereas others need a very long time to allow for plant and seed maturity, and for habitat tree redevelopment.

Another significant consequence of the frequent bushfires was that the complex mosaic of age structures and forest fuels was effectively wiped clean, leaving large areas with just a single age class.

Reintroducing fire back into the broader landscape to achieve some sort of fuel complexity and balance is a major long-term challenge.

Grass fires in the bush?

Major bushfires can totally remove tree crowns, and many trees may even die.

As the bush slowly begins to recover the understory vegetation is often temporarily replaced by grasses, particularly giant mountain grass (Dryopoa dives), until the tree canopy reestablishes and closes over again.

If there is another major bushfire before canopy closure it can develop into a fast-moving grass fire rather than a slower moving bushfire.

A good example was at Seaton in 2013 which burnt intensely overnight, at breakneck speed, and faster than anyone predicted, through giant mountain grass that had sprouted from an earlier Walhalla bushfire in 2007.

Risk Aversion.

There is no doubt that serious injuries or deaths of firefighters or losses in communities shakes all firefighters to their very core.

The risks are very real. There have been several deaths of forest firefighters, mostly from falling trees and branches, over the last few decades.

Understandably, nobody wants to cause or to feel responsible for these losses. PTSD is common among forest firefighters but is largely silent, undiagnosed and untreated.

The unfair attacks by lawyers, the media, the community and armchair experts iduring the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission against senior CFA and Departmental staff had major long-term ramifications.

Everything always seems inevitable in hindsight…

Risk assessment, risk avoidance and procrastination then became a dominant feature.

AIIMS incident management, which was originally introduced by the Forests Commission after Ash Wednesday in 1983, was designed to be light and nimble, but became centralised, overblown and cumbersome.

There is a VERY big difference between taking risks and being reckless…

Part of the response to risk avoidance after Black Saturday was to add more layers of management (fire ground, incident, regional and State control), more processes, checkboxes, data collection, teleconferences, micromanaging, analysis paralysis and time-wasting procedures. But there is often no time to waste with a fast-moving bushfire and those on the ground are often best placed to decide…

Be decisive…. right or wrong…. make a decision…. The road of life is paved with flat squirrels that couldn’t make a decision…

Senior bushfire staff in Australia also watched in horror as our American counterparts were being regularly taken to court and sued. Some American fire managers even resorted to taking out professional indemnity insurance. For example, the families of the 19 firefighters killed at Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona in 2013 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state and the incident command for negligence. The courts ultimately ruled against the claimants. But the damage was done.

And despite assurances at home in Australia – that if you did your job properly and followed the rules – it sent shockwaves through all senior ICC firefighters.

Claims for industrial manslaughter, stress related illness and community class actions seemed to climb in number.

Some (me included) refused to accept senior ICC roles like Level 3 Incident Controller after being savaged in the Black Saturday and 2014 Hazelwood mine fire inquiries.

Shift from prevention to response.

As technology advanced, firefighters were always quick to embrace it… which is a good thing… (e.g. aerial reconnaissance – 1930, helicopters – 1949, fixed-wing firebombing – 1967, helicopter firebombing – 1983), all began in Victoria.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some very talented and committed young people in FFMVic, but shortages of experienced fire crews, resources and incident managers, became very apparent over time. Aircraft are useful and important but there is absolutely no substitute for “boots-on-the -ground”

These shortages resulted in a steady and subtle shift from prevention (fuel reduction burning) to more expensive suppression (helicopters and large firebombers).

In the summer of 2006-07, lightning started 66 fires between 1 and 3 December. By the 10 December, 46 fires were still uncontained but, more importantly, 24 of them had few, or no on-ground resources allocated to them at all, other than some aerial reconnaissance or firebombing from above, leaving them to burn unchecked and grow in both area and perimeter in heavy fuel. 

These fires were all initially in steep inaccessible country and remote from towns and settlements. But the cumulative area of bushfire escalated exponentially.

No amount of heroic suppression effort by on-ground crews or aerial firebombers can then overcome the deadly combination of extreme weather, rugged terrain and heavy accumulation of fuels when a bushfire escalates to landscape scale.

These 2006-07 bushfires eventually joined and burnt for two months, with an overall area in excess of 1 million ha, and impacted settlements and farmland along the interface. A total of 33 houses were lost and over 1300 km of fencing destroyed.

It was a similar story during Black Summer in 2019-20 when several fires deep in the bush, and not presenting an immediate danger, were left to burn largely unchecked. But they eventually grew too big and joined up to threaten Cann River and Mallacoota.

https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/history-and-incidents/past-bushfires

Kevin Tolhurst & Greg McCarthy (2016) Effect of prescribed burning on wildfire severity: a landscape-scale case study from the 2003 fires in Victoria, Australian Forestry, 79:1, 1-14, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049158.2015.1127197

Many seasoned firefighters advocate for a return to the methods used in the 1960s and ‘70s when the Forests Commission lit small spot fires on main ridges in the back country during autumn and let them trickle down the slope and go out overnight, or in a day or two.

These small, widely spaced spot fires were lit late in the day when the temperature and wind was dropping and the RH was rising, so they would burn slowly outwards in circles and either join-up or fizzle-out late in the evening. Flame heights were deliberately kept low, which resulted in minimal tree crown scorch. The burns were patchy (~70 – 80% coverage) so the fuel was reduced but not eliminated.

Fuel reduction burns in late autumn and early winter, on the top one third of the north facing ridges, is easier to achieve and very effective at breaking up the broader forest landscape into manageable blocks.

Importantly, these burns would often extinguish themselves up against natural boundaries like rocks or creeks, boundaries like roads and tracks, or shady areas on southerly aspects.

They were planned to adjoin areas that had been fuel reduced a few years earlier to create an interlocking mosaic. A bit was burnt each year, so they became multi-aged and often left unbounded (not requiring a hard-edge burn perimeter).

Ridgetops are generally where lightning strikes during summer (See: Gippsland Zig-Zag). Reducing this fuel can keep fires small and close to the point of ignition which gives a better chance at early suppression.

If first attack fails, often the only safe strategy is to build major fallback lines in combination with backburning and patrol that can take weeks or months. This also brings additional costs of control and rehabilitation.

Ridgetop burning helps keep the fires contained in the bush rather than letting them come out of the forest into the cleared farmland.

The objectives of landscape burning are different from asset protection works which are generally closer to towns and settlements. In conjunction with slashing and mulching, the frequency and intensity of asset protection works are more significant.

Alpine fires of January 1978.

Rainfall in northeast Victoria in the six months prior to the summer of 1977-78 was only 298 mm, which was the lowest since 1938 when 254 mm fell. West Gippsland had 361 mm compared to 261 in 1938.

Unsurprisingly, the summer was characterised by a build-up of extreme fire danger with 606 outbreaks within the Fire Protected Area (FPA)

Sunday the 15 January 1978 was a day of Total Fire Ban with hot northwest winds from the early morning. Temperatures reached into the high thirties and low forties.  All Forests Commission Districts had been put on high alert with crews on standby.

A typical strong southwest change crossed the State late in the afternoon with intense thunderstorms and lightning, but little rain.

Before the cool change arrived, the Commission was involved in nine other fires and was supporting the CFA at a grassfire near Paynesville where two CFA volunteers were killed.

Reports slightly differ, but the lightning caused a spate of at least 88 fires in the mountains, with most being reported on Sunday evening and throughout Monday from FCV towers and reconnaissance flights. 

Most of the major fires were in the remote mountains of the Bright, Myrtleford, Heyfield and Maffra Forest Districts. The more accessible fires were quickly brought under control.

The Forests Commission was severely stretched, and Stage 2 of the State Disaster Plan (DISPLAN) was implemented, enabling the Army and Air Force to be called to assist the 850 Commission employees and contract timber industry workers. The Country Fire Authority, State Emergency Service, State Electricity Commission, Transport Regulation Board, Lands Department and the Police, also contributed significantly.

Eleven different FCV control centres were established (this was an era before AIIMS). The Army assisted with five mobile cooking teams at base camps. A total of 25 bulldozers were deployed including logging contractors.

A notable feature of these fires was the very important role played by large military helicopters in moving men and supplies to combat multiple fires in rugged terrain.

This was probably the first time that large military helicopters had been used to support Australian firefighters on such a scale. It proved a “game-changer”

The Departmental Hughes 500 helicopter, which had been working at Toolangi, was immediately redeployed to Mt Beauty. Two other small helicopters were contracted by Monday evening. On Tuesday, the SEC had obtained access to an RAAF Iroquois which was then made available to the FCV under the State Disaster Plan arrangements. A further two heavy lift RAAF Iroquois, plus two lighter Army Kiowas arrived on Wednesday.

New helipads were cut, but crews were still walking up to four hours to get to some of the remote and inaccessible fires.

The RAAF Iroquois proved ideal for crew transport and could take up to 7 passengers and airlifted over 100 people over the course of the fires. They could also winch equipment and fuel drums. In one example at Mt Feathertop, the deployment times were reduced from a 6-hour drive, plus an arduous walk, to a short 15-minute flight back to the camp at Mt Beauty. This not only increased the amount of useful on-ground work, but reduced fatigue on crews and damage to vehicles.

But managing, refuelling and dispatching multiple crews and equipment to 12 different bushfires using the 8 helicopters proved a major logistical challenge for the Commission. But a lot was learnt for the future.

Five small agricultural aircraft were also used for firebombing. Four were based at Snowy Range and one at Mt Beauty, and together they dropped a total of 201 loads to support on ground crews using hand tools in the rough and steep terrain. While several fixed wing aircraft were also used for reconnaissance and transport.

Helicopters were not used for firebombing in 1978 but were available five years later in November 1982 at Seaton when the NSCA at West Sale fitted a large Bambi bucket to one of its medium helicopters. Belly Tanks weren’t introduced until about 1984-85.

A lot of valuable equipment was lost during these fires and chainsaws were sometimes left in the bottom of gullies and never recovered.

Most fires were extinguished or controlled by the following Sunday when some light rain fell (< 5mm) across the fire ground making 4WD tracks slippery. However, the underlying drought index remained high.

Rain later in March 1978 eased the fire situation and the season came to an end with general rain during April.

Unlike more recent alpine mega-fires, the total area burnt was only 23,000 ha, with 20,850 ha in 8 major blazes, and the largest at Mt Tawonga covering only 8,200 ha.

The Forests Commission’s Chief of the Forest Protection Branch, Val Cleary, made another public plea to the State Government for a more permanent fleet of bushfire helicopters. An internal review followed but with no direct change other than the existing single light helicopter on contract.

In the review of the fires, the FCV Chief Fire Officer, Barry Johnston, noted on 6 February 1978 –

Despite the amount of equipment employed, a large percentage of the perimeter of many fires had to be controlled by the use of hand tools. One particularly difficult fire on Mt Feathertop was entirely controlled by hand trails.

This work was facilitated by the number, training, willingness, youth and fitness of the additional men engaged earlier as additional manpower for firefighting.

Landscape Burning.

Importantly, in the decades prior to the summer of 1978 the Forests Commission had achieved a progressive increase in the area of Fuel Reduction Burning (FRB). While the annual figures varied according to the seasons, the rolling average had increased over the previous five years from about 150,000 ha to 200,000 ha per year.

This meant that nearly one million ha of forests had been treated by burning, leaving fuels at reduced levels and generally less than five years old. Most of this burning was low intensity in autumn along ridgetops in the eastern ranges.

There are some critics of FRB that claim that remote back country burning is ineffective and irrelevant. But in my experience, this prior landscape burning undoubtedly played a major part in the rapid success of the 1978 fire suppression effort.

Reducing fuel can also be very effective at giving safer access to crews, or as “anchor points” to tie in fallback lines and large-scale backburning when indirect attack is needed.

Importantly, most of the lightning strikes in January 1978 occurred on remote ridgetops in the lighter, sparser and recently burnt fuels.

The lower fuel levels not only reduced fire intensity, flame heights and rates of spread, but the more open forest allowed hand crews to gain access to the seat of the fires and then cut fire trails with hand tools or with small first attack dozers (FADs). This quick action combined with aggressive first attack kept most of the fires small and contained on State forests. No lives or private property were lost.

For all sorts of reasons, the area of landscape burning steadily declined from the mid-1980s. There was also a shift from prevention to response with a greater reliance on firebombing aircraft and indirect attack.

It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the relatively small area burnt in January 1978 was due to the amount of landscape and ridgetop burning done in the previous five years.

Compare the 1978 outcome to the later megafires at Caledonia in 1998, the repeating alpine bushfires of 2002-03, 2005-06, 2006-07, Black Saturday in 2009, Aberfeldy/Seaton in 2013, the Snowy River Complex in 2014 and then Black Summer 2019-20, where preventative landscape burning had significantly declined.

And finally, there were so many bushfires that summer that the Forests Commission didn’t have enough money to pay all the overtime owed to staff. We had to wait until 1 July and the new financial year but then got whacked by the taxation department.

I know, because I was there…

Corryong – 1978.