Clarence (Clarrie) Gray Ward saw action as a gunner with the 2/7th Field Artillery Regiment around Tobruk in 1941 and during the first and second battles of El Alamein in 1942. He later landed at Tarakan in Borneo in May 1945.

Clarrie was one of about ninety ex-servicemen recruited as overseers into the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) after the War.

A handful of ex-servicemen were also accepted into the Forestry School at Creswick, some under a special entry scheme. They included Jeff Brisbane (RAN), Trevor Arthur (RAAF), Bill Middleton (2 AIF), Frank May (RAAF), Derrick Rolland (RAAF), Keith Jerome (RAN), Col Almond (RAN), Joe Adams (RAAF), Dudley Adams (RAAF), and John Macdonald (RAAF).

Several foresters who had already graduated from Creswick also served with distinction. They included Ben Benallack (2 AIF), Paddy McMahon (2 AIF), John Chinner (2 AIF), Bill Flentje (RAAF), Stan Butler (2 AIF), John Newey (RAN), Charles Fletcher (RAAF), Rex Jones (2 AIF), Bert Head (2 AIF), Roly Parke (2 AIF), Alan Gordon (2 AIF), John Fitzpatrick (2 AIF), Tom Loughrey (2 AIF), Ken Simmonds (RAN), Russell Larnach (RAAF) and submariner Alf Leslie (RAN).

Others who had previously served in the First World War, such as the Divisional Forester at Wangaratta, Charlie Watson, reenlisted into the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) to serve once again on the home front.

The Chairman of the Forests Commission, A. V. Galbraith, a WW1 veteran who had been badly gassed at Messines on the western front, was very supportive of other servicemen.

These blokes often had reputations for being tough, no-nonsense and practical, foresters and bushmen. They undoubtedly helped shape the “can-do” culture of the Forests Commission.

The forest foreman and overseers were the backbone of the Commission and became the undisputed kings of their domain with overall operational control of their individual patch of bush. This included firefighting, fuel reduction burning, silviculture, logging supervision, road maintenance and other works.

Overseers had influence in their local communities, longevity of service, and status to go with it. Occasionally a bit gruff, they also proved invaluable mentors to fresh-faced foresters straight out of Creswick and enjoyed playing a few harmless tricks on them from time-to-time.

Unlike Creswick foresters who were regularly and compulsorily moved around the state by the Commission every few years, forest overseers tended to stay in one place for longer periods and not only got to know the bush but integrated into their local communities.

Clarrie had an interesting and varied forestry career. After attending the Foreman’s School at Kinglake West in 1950, he was first posted to the wilds of Bendoc and then Cabbage Tree in far East Gippsland, and later to Robinvale on the Murray River in 1965. It was here that he gained the confidence and respect, not only of the community, but also the local indigenous FCV crews. He died in April 1977 after a long illness, aged 61.

By Rob Youl – Reproduced from Victorian State Foresters Association (VSFA) Newsletter #38 April 1977.

Almost 50 years later, the author apologises for his sexism, insensitivity and excess testosterone. Furthermore, he trusts his readers will discard their disgust and accept this as the zeitgeist[1] of the 1970s. But more embarrassingly, I ask myself now, why didn’t I brandish a rakehoe in the photo?

I’d led a drab and conservative life until that fateful day.

The Public Relations Officer called me in. The US Consulate just rang offering us Smokey Bear. We want to put him in Moomba. My reply probably reflected my interest in the protection of our national culture and my knowledge, as a gardener, that horse manure made excellent compost. But we need a human body to drape the suit around. How about you? I agreed.  I knew that a few others would be silly enough to ley themselves in for such a task and I thought that seeing half a million Victorians through Smokey’s eyes would be interesting (for I presumed that he had ocular orifices).

I met the bloke from the Consulate, and he showed me the United States Forest Service Information.  I suddenly realised that the whole effort had to be taken more seriously than I usually approach things.  One suddenly had responsibility on a nation-to-nation scale.  I therefore resolved to stay sober and decorous, to never wander around with my Smokey head under my arm and to always ensure that my jeans were clean.  It was intriguing to see State Department cables from Washington describing the famous bear’s visit – doubtless quite a frivolous change from the usual cryptic messages about shipments of hamburger beef and sales of F-111s.

The first appearance was at Tullamarine.  The media would meet Smokey, but first they had to see Bobby Vee, ageing US rock star of the Brylcream days of yore, who’d arrived on the same plane as I ostensibly had.  I’d loved “Rubber Ball”, “Be True to Your School” and “Take Good Care of my Baybee”, but, waiting in the wings under wraps, dressed up for the first time and ready to go myself, I wasn’t able to ask him for his autograph.

Smokey was ushered in.  Arc lights glared.  The sweat flowed as if through opened floodgates; the RH rose.  Athol and Big Frank did the talking – Smokey is advised to stay mute.  The media jocks took photos of him leaving the Pan Am jumbo with the hostesses.  These young, and not so young, ladies were quite affectionate.  As I hold them before the camera they speculated on my gender, and I found the massive size of my paw convenient camouflage for carnality until i was reminded by my shrewd mentor from the Consulate, “Now, now, Smokey.  Decorum!”

Walking about the terminal I realised the anonymity of the suit prevented me from being embarrassed.  It was also excellent in that it allowed uninhibited perving.

Outside the terminal Athol., looking handsome in his FCV uniform shirt, ably parried the probing questions of the splendid young TV interviewers, even a hard one about Blinky Bill.  A couple of kids spotted me then and came running over, and I immediately realised Smokey’s greatest strength and, in fact, his raison d’etre.  The children were excited, but pleasant and friendly.  They recognised Smokey from television cartoons they’d seen.  We were to drive off triumphantly in MZF*000 led by police motorbikes; I climbed into the limousine but was jammed in a foetal position because my unfamiliar hat added inches to my height.

The next engagement was days later at a Mulgrave kindergarten.  The kids were a delight although some of the photos taken showed Smokey looking like a child molester.  Then we drove off to Sherbrooke.  A group of pensioners on a coach trip enjoyed the unexpected anthropomorphic spectacle and the Kallista school marched down to hear John Lloyd and Bill Clifford talk about fire prevention.  The Sun photographer took pictures of Smokey holding two kids on his shoulders.  The pose had to be held for a couple of ultimately agonising minutes.  I was mobbed by the kids, and in the melee, lost a bear paw.  Thank God it was quickly found and tied into place.  I could hear the kids debating below me.  Despite the evidence of the briefly glimpsed boot underneath the paw, most of the children refused to believe that Smokey was human and not ursine[2].

The girls from St. Monica’s Convent, Footscray, wanted autographs and I discovered the thrill of being a celebrity.  For 10 minutes I was Dennis Lillee.  “From Smokey to Debbie and Wayne”.  “From Smokey to Pia and Shane”.

Healesville was next with a Rod Incoll pyrotechnical master touch.  We drove in, bear on tailgate, with Dave Osborn holding aloft a yellow smoke bomb.  Rod told the 500 children I’d sign autographs and suddenly Smokey was surrounded by clutching, clawing, tugging, grabbing, pulling, pushing, probing, thrusting, jostling, bustling organisms.  I recalled Hitchcock’s film “The Birds’ and all that I’d ever read about mass hysteria.  One kid was heard to say “Let’s see whose Dad’s inside! There was only one thing to do.  Military training provided the instinctive reaction.  “On the command Abort Mission, Abort Mission!  OK, Abort Mission”.  We were away.

Then it was off to Marysville, and Smokey’s greatest thrill in a brief career as a multi-media personality.  The energetic and capable young headmaster had the kids outside the school with placards and ready to cheer.  Smokey was escorted through the gate to a green-painted, bracken-garlanded throne made from beer boxes and then given presents – the school’s entire output of arts and crafts for that day, in fact.  The children took Smokey to a camp they’d set up with tents and fire pit and confidently told him why they’d taken the precautions they had.  One lad came forth with a brown paper parcel which had a reassuring cold, metallic, cylindrical feel, a present from the teachers.  Smokey was escorted back out the gate and was very moved by the warm and polite juvenile adieux like “Come back again, Smokey!” repeated by so many.

The Moomba sun rose, and we assembled at Carlton.  I felt like Clark Kent as I changed in a basement car park.  Added fuel to my fetishes was provided by the rubber urine bag (the suit itself has no drain holes) with AD/DC, S&M, B&D undertones and overtones, which I lashed to my thigh.  From the float I recognised and amazed an old friend I hadn’t seen for years.  I don’t think he’s sure even now who he was talking to.

The parade began.  Immediately behind was the delightful Ms Italian Community.  (Trevor Brown had been doing his bit to make Australia a more assimilated and happy nation by keeping her company and calming her nerves).  I soon discovered that I had little time to leer or even look. 

I discovered also the Queen has a very difficult job.  Waving makes you tired.  The cheering was intense as the masses of humanity, orchestrated by the enthusiastic Tony Manderson, roared approval of our float.  I leapt around trying to acknowledge everyone, but even at one km/hr that was difficult.  Ask Jim Stirling, intrepid photographer.  He found taking shots of the procession from all angles hard going at that speed too.  At one point our smoke generator caught fire, but quick-thinking Kester Baines solved that problem.  One noticed the police were rarely wreathed in smiles, but that the dignitaries outside the Town Hall were as extroverted in their behaviour as everyone else who formed the crowd.

The parade slowed down in the gardens, but the kids still shouted and cheered.

A crisis developed.  The suit had to be in Sydney that night for a tourist promotion.  The plane left Tulla in about half an hour.  A quick strip behind the float’s grove of brush box trees and a police escort got the suit dispatched.

One reverted to life as a human.  When I waved no-one cheered.  When I waved no-one responded.  When I held my arm out in front of me i didn’t see a furry paw, but distinctly Caucasian hand.  I was Rob Youl again.  The experience gave me an insight into the life of a professional actor and how the characters one plays could dominate your own character.  I thought that I could see why George Reeves, the former Superman, had killed himself.

Impressions from the parade were that there’s still a lot of kids in Victoria, even if population growth is close to zero, that this country still produces very attractive women, that our population is now exceedingly heterogeneous, and that Melbournians aren’t entirely staid and stolid.

Quote of the week was the statement by Alan Threader, “You should be in a rat’s suit, not a bear’s!

A couple of late performances at Creswick (thanks a million, Tom [Morrison]), Yooralla, Toorak and Heathcote and we packed Smokey into his crate.  It must be bloody cramped in there for him.  Back he’ll go to the USA.

And you might criticise our use of an American Madison Avenue folk figure.  Keith Dunstan did (The Sun, 21 Mar 77).  Well, we never said that Smokey was anything else than that.  Like my other visiting fireman does, he came for a look around, and he gave pleasure to many children and plenty of adults too.  He also made some of those citizens, of all ages, think about fire prevention.  To criticise Smokey specifically is to ignore the overall assault on our culture, and on the remnants of our national identity.  In a global village, in a world where trade is free, there are thousands of international influences we cannot avoid.  We can’t avoid Sony calculators, Abba, London and Liverpool slang, sweet and sour pork, Danish blue movies, Starsky and Hutch, and Peugeot bikes, any more than we could avoid computers, or the environmental revolution or the permissive society.

[1] zeitgeist – the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

[2] Ursine – relating to or resembling bears.

Philip King was born in the remote Glen Valley in far eastern Victoria on the 12 Feb 1933 where he attended the local primary school. It was cold in the mountains where it often snowed, and the Omeo Highway was regularly blocked during winter.

Phil later attended high school at Richmond in Melbourne but soon returned to find a job closer to home in the office of the Glen Wills gold mining company. But the company finally closed in about 1950.

Gold had been discovered in 1861 in Wombat Creek, which flows northeast from Mount Wills.  A couple of decades later, tin and silver were also found. Large amounts of money were invested in tin mines, but the results were disappointing.

Sunnyside was established in 1891 and grew by 1893 to have a population of about 300.  The bustling townships of Glen Valley and Glen Wills also served the mines with post offices, schools and hotels. A public hall was built in 1936.

But like most small gold mining settlements, prosperity of the valley steadily declined as the gold petered out and all that now remains are a few houses and farms.

The Grand Design.

The devastation of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires was unprecedented. Several townships were entirely obliterated leaving 71 people dead including four Forests Commission staff, 69 sawmills were lost and over 3700 buildings were destroyed.

Nearly two million hectares of Victoria’s State forests were burned. The intense bushfire killed vast swathes of mountain ash, alpine ash and shining gum in the Central Highlands, some for the second time since earlier bushfires in 1926 and 1932.

In the wake of the catastrophic bushfires and the scathing Stretton Royal Commission report, a quiet revolution began across Victoria’s state forests. An epic story that took decades to unfold and where several things were in play.

• Salvage of the fire-killed trees became an urgent and overriding task for the Forests Commission. It was estimated that over 6 million cubic metres needed to be harvested, and quickly, before the dead trees split and the valuable timber deteriorated.
• Severe shortages of labour and other pressing needs during the war years slowed the task but the massive timber salvage program was virtually completed by 1950.
• The mountain ash forests in the Central Highlands were regenerating vigorously after the bushfires but they wouldn’t be available for timber harvesting for many decades to allow them enough time to regrow.
• It was apparent that Victoria’s timber industry needed to shift to the east and northeast but it was always intended that it would move back into the Central Highlands once the ash resource had recovered in about 60 to 80 years’ time.
• Meanwhile, the demand for hardwood timber for the post-war housing boom continued unabated.
• The Forests Commission was under considerable pressure to identify new timber resources to replace the mountain ash lost in the 1939 fires. The alpine ash stands to the north of Heyfield and the east of Mansfield came into particularly sharp focus.
• The Commission also needed to make its own maps of the remote forests using the aerial photographs taken by the RAAF during the war years.
• Based on new and more reliable assessment figures, decisions could be confidently made about the allocation of timber licences and the location of new sawmills.
• The memory of the losses of in the 1939 bushfires was still fresh. And despite strong and vocal opposition, the Forests Commission refused to allow new sawmills to be rebuilt inside the forest as they had before 1939. But those few that still existed were permitted to remain… for a while anyway.
• The advent of more powerful bulldozers, crawler tractors, geared haulage trucks and petrol chainsaws dramatically changed logging practices.
• Diesel and roads were rapidly replacing steam and rails.
• The newly built and expanded departmental road and track network made it feasible for trucks to haul logs directly from the forest to town-based sawmills within a few hours.
• The earlier research done at the Commission’s Newport seasoning kilns was bearing fruit and Victorian eucalypts became highly prized for flooring, joinery and furniture and the timber industry began investing in new value-adding equipment.
• Victoria’s softwood industry was relatively modest at the time until planting expanded in 1961.
• An agreement was negotiated between the Forests Commission and Australian Paper Manufactures (APM) in December 1936 and the mill began taking pulpwood at Maryvale to make heavy-duty Kraft paper from October 1939. This had a big impact on the utilisation of lower quality logs and the economics of the logging industry.

The main social and economic beneficiaries of the Grand Design and the big move east of the Victorian timber industry were small rural settlements like Heyfield, Mansfield, Myrtleford, Bruthen, Nowa Nowa, Orbost, Cann River, Colac, Alexandra and Swifts Creek, which grew into thriving communities based upon State forests.

These places became flourishing “Timber Towns” with jobs, decent housing, schools, shops, sporting clubs, public transport and health care. A more secure and safer place for families than the itinerant sawmills set deep in the bush which was characteristic of the earlier period.

The visionary architects behind the Grand Design were the Chairman of the Forests Commission, A.V. Galbraith, together with the Chief Fire Officer, Alf Lawrence, who was appointed after the 1939 bushfires and later became FCV Chairman until he retired in 1969. Undoubtedly, Sir Albert Lind, the Minister for Forests and local MP for East Gippsland from 1920 to 1961, played an influential role too.

The Forest Assessors.

The Victorian State Government invested heavily. The stakes were high, and it was critical for the Forests Commission to collect accurate timber volume figures because future decisions about new sawmill locations were to have long-term social and economic ramifications.

Forest assessment crews were nomadic and established rudimentary base camps deep in the bush. They were also resourceful and lived under canvas, in cattlemen’s huts or sometimes took a couple of portable and prefabricated flat-pack Stanley Huts with them.

They could be away in the mountains for many weeks at a time with little contact with the outside world other than a scratchy RC-16B radio.

They were fit and lean and life was Spartan. Fresh food and supplies travelled on rough 4WD tracks or by packhorse, so crews often supplemented their meagre rations by living off the land.

Rough and steep terrain, sketchy maps, occasionally getting lost, toppling off horses, thick scrub, snakes and wire grass lurking with a myriad of other bighty and prickly things. The vagaries of the weather like heat, snow, dangerous river crossings, falling trees and the ever-present threat of bushfires. There were occasional injuries.

If assessors needed to trek away from their basecamp for a few days, they took the minimum amount of stuff and slept under the stars.

While it all sounds very romantic, it was harsh and lonely and by the end of a long summer bashing through the scrub each day the novelty had worn off and tempers sometimes frayed.

There was also a challenge of crew leadership to be rapidly learned on-the-job. And for many first-year forestry school graduates being posted to Assessment Branch for a couple of years was a rite of passage and a solid grounding.

Leon Pederick graduated from the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick in December 1950 and like so many others before him was posted to the Assessment Branch. After some initial assessment jobs and more training at the Kinglake Assessment school, Leon led the Glen Wills team to measure trees in State forests near Mt Bogong in October 1952.

Meanwhile, Phil King was only 19 when he returned from a short stint in compulsory National Service with the Army. He was driving a cow home to Glen Valley and happened to be walking past an old timber cottage at Sunnyside which was owned by the Forests Commission and where Leon’s forest assessors were setting up camp. He was approached by Ray Brash about a job as chainman in the assessment crew which he readily accepted.

And so began a lifelong career with the Forests Commission.

Phil’s task was simply to bash through the scrub on a set compass bearing pulling a metal measuring chain while at the same time pushing down the wiregrass and kicking the tiger snakes out of the way. The assessors would follow in his path and measure the trees one chain on each side of the narrow strip. Being chainman was difficult and arduous and not many people had the stamina or fortitude to last long in the job.

Their initial surveying of roads, tracks and ridges through the alpine ash forest near Glen Wills was not difficult, but the work became more strenuous when they had to leave the tracks and follow fixed bearings through the steep countryside.

And for the assessors, having a good sense of direction, being able to read a paper map and use a measuring chain, prismatic compass and dead reckoning were essential skills, as well as a stout pair of walking boots to somehow navigate through the bush and get back to camp at the end of a long day.

But getting lost was embarrassingly common, particularly in broken or undulating terrain with few roads or tracks.  And in the days before GPS, walking up to a hilltop or ridgeline to get a better view and reset your bearings was often the most practical solution.

The team were in radio contact with the Commission’s Tallangatta office. Orders for food and supplies were relayed to shops and then transported on the bus which serviced Glen Wills each day.

Because Phil showed good horsemanship skills, he was soon elevated to the important job as packman to move supplies and equipment as well as setting up temporary camps at old cattleman’s huts and in the bush for the team.

There was frequent vehicle trouble, with the Land Rover and Dodge truck out of action at regular intervals. Sometimes they were able to take them to Tallangatta for repairs, but other times the crew did their own maintenance and somehow kept them running.

At the conclusion of the Glen Wills assessment, the team moved to Bullengarook near Daylesford and lived in the old internment camp at Bullarto used during World War Two. They had been sent to measure pole-sized mixed species forests that had regenerated after the damage done to the bush in the decades following the Gold Rush of 1851.

It was while at Bullarto that a couple of the crew members pooled their cash to purchase an old 1927 Packard sedan from a Malvern car yard to get around on the weekends. It served the team well providing transport to frivolities in Melbourne every second weekend, costing one penny per mile to cover fuel and running costs.

There were several more assessment projects before Phil transferred to a less transient position based at Tallangatta to build new roads and 4WD tracks working for Kevin O’Kane.

But the lure and adventure of assessment remained, and Phil returned for several more tours at Benambra, Tom Groggin, Heyfield and the Otways.

In 1956, the Forests Commission underwent a major internal restructure by amalgamating the hardwood and plantation divisions to create 56 new forest districts, each under the control of an experienced District Forester. Things remained largely unchanged for the next three decades. In about 1960, Phil secured a role based at Omeo in the newly formed Swifts Creek District working for Moray Douglas.

Forest Forman’s School – 1962.

In 1962, while working at Omeo, Phil was fortunate enough to be selected for the coveted Forest Forman’s school based at the No. 1 Camp in the Mt. Disappointment State forest. Foresters, Max Boucher and Fred Craig, were the main lecturers during the intensive nine-month course.

The camp had previously been used to house Italian internees and later German POWs during the war and was remote from any townships and cold in winter.

But the course changed Phil’s life and he kept in contact with his 1962 cohort of classmates and their families over the subsequent decades.

Forest District Life.

Upon graduation, Phil had short postings with the Forests Commission, firstly at Daylesford for two months, then Orbost for another two months, before finally settling at Broadford in May-1963. He was appointed as a probationary Forest Foreman and, from June 1965, as a permanent Forest Overseer, a job he enjoyed for the next 14 years.

Forest foreman and overseers were the backbone of the Forests Commission and became undisputed kings of their domain with overall operational control of their individual patch of bush. In addition to firefighting, road maintenance and other works, one of Phil’s main tasks was marking trees to be felled in the bush before they were snigged out and loaded onto trucks to go to local sawmills.

Unlike Creswick foresters who were regularly and compulsorily moved around the state by the Forests Commission every few years, Forest Overseers tended to stay in the one place for longer periods and so got to know the bush and their local communities.

But in 1977, Philip King (one L) decided to move back to East Gippsland as a forest overseer based at Nowa Nowa and took supervision responsibilities for all the post and sleeper cutters in the coastal and foothill forest as far as the Lakes-Colquhoun Road. His long-time nemesis Phillip Morgan (two Ls) operated on the other side from Mt Taylor near Bruthen.

And like all forest overseers, Phil had an active role in bushfires and fuel reduction burns but in later years became noted across East Gippsland for his exemplary skills as a catering officer and camp cook. A very important role at any bushfire.

The Forests Commission surrendered its discrete identity in 1983 when it merged into the newly formed Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands (CFL).

It took some years for the new regional structure to settle, but Phil remained at Nowa Nowa largely unaffected by the turbulence going on around him.

However, the tempo of change accelerated after the initial amalgamation in 1983 with many more departmental restructures and name changes occurring over the subsequent decades.

Widely known and well regarded, Phil retired in 1993 after 41 years of service from what by then had become the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (CNR).

And like most forestry employees, Phil was always encouraged to be active in his local community. He had joined the Lions Club of Australia and was later elevated to the senior leadership position of the District Governor.

Phil recently turned 90 and is still fighting fit with a sharp memory and is full of rich stories of his time in the Forests Commission.

Main Photo: Retirement – Sam Bruton, Doug Stevenson (CNR Regional Manager), Phil King, Ray Bennett, Norm Cox – 1993.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-I-W4LmdJekuTHpjmEiwN_2M-kFPbpkL/view

The assessors.

The Helmut Kofler Hütte at Mt Buller was opened as a shelter for skiers by the Chairman of the Forests Commission, Alf Lawrence, on 28 June 1959.

It replaced an earlier building and was named after one of Mt Buller’s most colourful characters.

Helmut, a native of Austria, was the manager of the original Mt Buller Chalet and a passionate ski jumper who entertained his guests with his aerial escapades.

Helmut and his wife, Muriel, were killed instantly in September 1940 on an inclined tramway used to transport timber logs from the higher slopes of Mt Buller to the sawmills below at Mirrimbah. They were ascending the mountain when the cable from the lifting winch and winding mechanism failed and the “truck” they were riding on then crashed. Two others were seriously injured.

Sandie Jeffcoat was among a handful of non-Creswick foresters from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra who were recruited into the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) during the 1970s. Other ANU graduates included David Harvey, Ian McArthur, Jack Bains, Mal Tonkin and Paul Mainey.

It was a very buoyant time for trained foresters with increased career opportunities in the Land Conservation Council (LCC) and the expanding National Parks Service. Private timber and plantation companies were also recruiting graduates. Forestry was one of the few tertiary qualifications in “land and bushfire management” available at the time.

Sandie’s postings with the FCV were to Nowa Nowa and Creswick between 1975 and 1981, before he was promoted to Mansfield District in 1982.

The Forests Commission first developed a substantial interest in the development of Mt Buller as a major ski field from the early 1940s. The challenge of establishing roads, communications, water and sewerage, accommodation and other services in a remote location was well suited to its experience and skills.

Initially, small clubs of alpine enthusiasts built rudimentary ski huts for their members, often with cramped and spartan conditions.

But it was common in the early days for disgruntled skiers to arrive on the doorstep of the FCV residence on a Saturday morning angry that their ski shacks had been demolished.  The District Forester from Mansfield, Jim Westcott, would travel up to Mt Buller with the crew prior to winter and demolish all the ski shacks that didn’t have a building permit.  Come the start of the snow season skiers were shocked when they arrived on a Friday afternoon or night to find their accommodation in neat piles of timber and roofing iron.

Commercial accommodation later flourished along with high-capacity chairlifts, ski hire facilities, slope grooming, ski patrols and new day-visitor facilities.

In another important development, modern and powerful snow ploughs, operated by hardy Country Roads Board crews, worked to keep access roads and car parks clear of snow, even in blizzard conditions.

Mt Buller was administered under an FCV Committee of Management and chaired by Ben Benallack in the 1960s, and Dr Ron Grose for much of the 1970s. Dr Fred Craig also served as deputy chair for a number of years.

The FCV District Forester at Mansfield attended committee meetings on an ex-officio basis. Jim Westcott and Hughie Brown filled this role for long periods.

During the 1970s, it was customary to appoint the Mansfield assistant F1A Forester as the operational manager of the Mt Buller Alpine Reserve. The highly coveted two year “tour of duty” had been occupied by FCV foresters including Malcolm McDougal, Bob Jones, Cyril Suggate and then Sandie Jeffcoat in 1982.

During his first winter, Sandie lived in a single room at the staff lodge with his wife Rae and their two young children. He later said it was one of the worst winter seasons in years but, in his own words, he learned a lot.

The Alpine Resorts Commission (ARC) was formed in 1984 after a major restructure of the former government agencies managing Victoria’s snow fields including the Forests Commission, Lands Department, National Parks Service and the State Electricity Commission. Sandie continued as Mt Buller’s resort manager for a total of 23 years, before leaving in 2005.

Under Sandie’s stewardship, Mt Buller experienced a major transformation into an all-seasons resort and holiday destination. Sealed roads, improved carparking, sewage, power and water supplies, snow making, and reticulated gas was all added.

Sandie was also a Mansfield Shire Councillor and President as well as a CFA Board Member. He was awarded a National Medal for firefighting in 1996.

Sandie passed away in December 2009, aged 59.

https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/community/recreation/555-above-the-snowline.html

Firstly… I have a confession to make… I just love old wooden boats…

In 1944, the three Haldane brothers, Bill, Alan and Hughie, began building an 84-foot wooden clipper at Port Fairy in southwestern Victoria from plans provided by the Western Boat Building Company from Tacoma in Washington State, America.

The Haldane brothers had previously built smaller timber vessels for couta and shark fishing, but the Tacoma was destined for deeper waters on the edge of the continental shelf to catch tuna.

But first they had to source the keel which needed to be extremely long and durable, so the brothers approached John William Nugent, the FCV District Forester at Forrest in the nearby Otway Ranges.

They wanted a 68-foot-long red ironbark log (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) which could be squared into a 12-inch keel. They also wanted a 64-foot keelson and other structural timbers for ribs and deck beams.

The District Forester advised that such a big red ironbark wasn’t available but a blue gum (E. globulus) meeting their specifications for the keel could be found.

It was during the Second World War and there were severe shortages of experienced people working in the forest, but Edward Babington was employed to cut the blue gum logs from near Benwerrin.

The logs, weighing up to 8 tons, were too large for local sawmills to handle so they were rough dressed in the bush and hauled onto a landing before being loaded onto trucks. Arthur Armistead of Lorne transported the logs to the Deans Marsh railway station before they were dispatched to Port Fairy by train.

After the costs of harvesting and transport had been paid by the Haldane brothers, a Royalty was paid to the Forests Commission based on the size of the logs. The prices ranged from 1 shilling and threepence (13 cents) per lineal foot for the 44-foot-long logs, up to 2 shillings and three pence (23 cents) per lineal foot for the massive 68-foot-long keel log.

When the six logs finally arrived at Port Fairy on 8 September 1944 there were no cranes big enough to handle them, so the Haldane brothers constructed lifting frames with ropes and pulley blocks as well as timber jinkers to transport them.

The brothers then man-handled the logs onto their vacant house block on the banks of the Moyne River, where the boat was to be built, and set about squaring and shaping them with an adze, a broad axe and a crosscut saw.

The keel was laid in 1945 which is a very significant occasion for every vessel. There are many ancient traditions such as placing a newly minted coin under the keel and then constructing the boat over it which is said to bring good luck during construction and to the captain and crew during her later life.

A scaffold covered with waterproof malthoid paper and canvas was erected to keep out the weather as the ship progressed. A long steaming tube was made to soften the timbers to bend them to the curve of the hull.

The ribs were made from red ironbark from Kennett River, the underwater planking of Jarrah from Western Australia, the above water planning from Douglas fir (Oregon), the beams from Otways blue gum, while the decking and mast boom were also made from Douglas fir. Spotted gum from NSW was also used. The wheelhouse and living quarters were lined Queensland maple and silky oak from NSW.

Many of the boat fittings had to be cast in a foundry to the specifications from the plans. The 240 hp diesel motor weighed 19-tons and was too heavy to lift so it was pulled to pieces, and put in, a bit at a time.

But in 1948, after nearly four years of toil, and just as the Tacoma was getting closer to being launched, the brothers ran out of money, and they were unable to get additional funding in Victoria. The South Australian government came to their rescue and provided a £20,000 loan to finish the boat on the proviso it moved interstate and was used to develop the fishing industry.

Finally, in mid-1951, the 120-ton Tacoma emerged from its shed. It then took another two months to dig over 130 tons of soil by hand to lower the vessel ready for launching. Tallow from the local butcher was used to grease the slipway.

It had been seven years since the blue gum logs had arrived at Port Fairy, and on a rising tide at 3:30 am on 5 November 1951, the Tacoma slid quietly into the Moyne River.

After some initial sea trials, the Tacoma sailed for her new home at Port Lincoln on Sunday 6 January 1952. On board for its maiden voyage, with all their worldly goods, were the three Haldane brothers and their entire families, plus the Bellamy twins, Keith and Jack, who had helped with the construction from the beginning, as well as the cook; all-in-all a total of nine adults, ten children, one watchdog and two cats.

The Tacoma became the pioneer of the South Australian tuna fishery, and later from 1968 she operated as a prawn trawler. These developments directly led to Port Lincoln becoming one of the largest and economically most important fishing ports in Australia.

After more than 50 years as a working boat at Port Lincoln the historic vessel was gifted in 2008 by the Haldane family to the Tacoma Preservation Society along with a cash donation of $100,000 and is now used for education, tours and cruises.

BTW – MVF means Motor Fishing Vessel.

Peter Evans (2024). Blue gum for a blue water fishery. AFHS

https://www.foresthistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/AFHS-2024-04-no.-91.pdf

The Forests Commission experimented with the distillation of sassafras oil during the war.

The conically shaped, cool temperate rainforest species, southern sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum), was believed to have medicinal properties, including the prevention of malaria.

The timber is prized for panelling, wood turning, musical instruments, and other specialty work.

Southern sassafras is very different from the Asian and North American Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) which contains the potent chemical, Safrole.

In the summer of 1942, students from the Forestry School cut sassafras leaves along the Warburton – Donna Buang Road to be distilled back at the FCV’s Powelltown depot.

The distillation process was similar to eucalyptus oil where the leaves were placed into a sealed tank and steam injected from a boiler. The steam caused the oil to be released from the leaves and the vapour was condensed as it went through a cooling tank. Sassafras oil is lighter than water and rose to the top where it was decanted off.  A meagre four pounds was produced in 1942-43.

Commercial production from State forest peaked in 1943-44 with 660 pounds of oil.

According to Walter Vears, a VSF student at the time, the Commission ceased production of sassafras oil after the war once commercial stocks of quinine became available.

As an interesting side note, Walter resigned from the Forests Commission in 1947 to study chemistry. He ended up working for Carlton and United Breweries and many of his amazing photos of the CUB plant are in the State Library.

Ref: Daniel Catrice (1996). History of forest activities in the Central Highlands & East Gippsland.

In mid-1968, Sir William “Blackjack” McDonald, a pastoralist from western Victoria and the Minister for Lands, Soldier Settlement and Conservation, controversially announced a new rural settlement scheme which involved clearing of remnant mallee woodlands and then selling Crown Land in the Little Desert. Some two hundred thousand acres was slated for agricultural subdivision.

The immediate outcry over the Little Desert proposal galvanised public opinion and threatened to become a major political issue for the Liberal government led by Sir Henry Bolte.

For the first time, the many disparate and divided conservation groups joined forces into a peak body known as the Conservation Council of Victoria.

An unlikely alliance of farmers, agricultural experts, economists, academics, suburban activists, scientists and conservationists banded together to stop McDonald’s scheme. The plan was even opposed by some Liberal politicians, including a young Bill Borthwick, who later replaced McDonald as minister.

For more than 100 years there had been occasional bitter disputes between foresters and the Lands Department over the clearing of forests and selling of public land. The new Conservation Council of Victoria enjoyed the support and benefited from the considerable political nous of some very influential forestry bureaucrats. Those quietly offering valuable contacts, insights and advice from the sidelines included the recently retired Chairman of the FCV, Alf Lawrence, the local FCV District Forester and noted ornithologist on the edge of the Little Desert at Wail, Bill Middleton, together with Dr. Peter Attiwill, a respected forestry lecturer from the University of Melbourne.

Leading Wimmera naturalist and National Park Ranger at Kiata, Keith Hateley, who the father of notable forester and gifted VSF lecturer, Ron Hateley, was also outspoken against McDonald’s plan.

In July 1969, several students at the Victorian School of Forestry also joined the protests with a jointly signed letter to The Age.

The Age Newspaper was fiercely critical and ran months of reports and editorials opposing the proposal.

Controversially, on 4 October 1969, a front-page story revealed a 16-mile road to be built through the desert would end at the property of Blackjack McDonald’s brother-in-law, Charles Koch. McDonald denied any wrongdoing or conflict of interest and demanded an apology from The Age for what he deemed “the tactics of low-class spectacular journalism”. He remained defiant and indignant and later sued The Age for libel, but eventually settled the matter out of court.

By November 1969, Sir William, who had initially dug in for a fight, was forced to capitulate and scale back his bold scheme to just twelve sheep farms, while at the same time announcing the creation of a new 90,000-acre Little Desert National Park.

But on 4 December 1969, the Labor and Country parties combined in the Legislative Council to block the Bill and McDonald’s poorly conceived scheme was consigned to oblivion.

Furthermore, the surprise loss of the safe Liberal seat of Dandenong to Labor’s Alan Lind (the nephew of long serving politician for East Gippsland and former Minister for Forests Sir Albert Lind) on the 6 December 1969 byelection sounded alarm bells and forced the government’s hand.

The State Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, was at a loss over the unexpected public outrage and wanted to diffuse the newly emerging “greenie” disquiet. As the longest-serving Victorian premier in history, he was not about to end his reign with an inglorious electoral defeat over a bit of mallee scrub.

During the 1970 election campaign, the usually hard-nosed Bolte promised at a public meeting in Ararat to increase the size and number of national parks, establish an environmental protection agency and acquire large areas of the Dandenong Ranges for public use and to improve fire protection.

But there remained a widespread electoral backlash against the Bolte Government in the May 1970 elections when the Country Party directed preferences against the Liberal Party across the State. Bolte narrowly won the election, but McDonald ignominiously lost his safe Liberal seat of Dundas, after holding it for over 15 years.

The summation of these tumultuous political events in the late 1960s proved a watershed moment and are often considered to mark the beginning of widespread environmental awareness and activism in Victoria.

Ironically, McDonald’s failed Little Desert plan laid the foundations for the State Government to create the Land Conservation Council (LCC) later in 1971. Its main charter was to make recommendations to parliament on the balanced use of Victoria’s public land.

The LCC was chaired by the formidable and politically well-connected figure of Sam Dimmick, while the Forests Commission was represented by its Chairman, Dr Frank Moulds.

The Council was proposed as an impartial mechanism to assess public land use but there were criticisms of its early composition as a “closed shop”, dominated by permanent heads of government departments. But the LCC pioneered processes for community input and many FCV staff moved over to the new organisation. One of the first was the talented Roger Cowley who drafted the policy that led to the initial definitions of reserves.

In its early years, the LCC’s community members included Professor John Turner, head of the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne, and John Landy (later Governor of Victoria) who was an agricultural scientist working for ICI and was also well-known for his sporting achievements. Later Dr Malcolm Calder brought his considerable botanical expertise to the LCC’s deliberations.

When Bill Borthwick, Victoria’s newly minted Minister for Conservation, delivered his welcoming speech to the freshly formed council members he advised them to make their recommendations… “as if for a thousand years”… And with that, he left them to it…

More than a decade earlier, in 1958, a major revision of the Forest Act included a new provision known as Section 50 which gave the Forests Commission powers to set aside State forests for special purposes such as recreation, conservation, landscape and so on.

By the time of the formation of the LCC in 1971, the Commission had set aside some 88 Section 50 Reserves including Sherbrooke Forest, Grampians Wonderland Reserve, Mt Macedon, Angahook, and Mt Baw Baw.

In response to shifting community moods, the Commission, under new Chairman Dr Frank Moulds, also formed the Recreation Branch. By 1972, its responsibilities had been considerably broadened and it became known as the Forest Environment and Recreation Branch (FEAR). This new direction did not initially enjoy whole-hearted support throughout the organisation, but it was soon embraced, and other State forest agencies quickly adopted the idea. FEAR Branch was first headed by Athol Hodgson.

Meanwhile, the Commission continued to strongly advocate for multiple use of the State’s forests as its core policy.  The idea aimed to use forests for more than one purpose and compliment the more formal conservation reserves such as national parks. The central objective of multiple use was to balance timber production and other forest products such as firewood, farm timbers, fence posts, poles, sleepers and honey. It also provided for active recreation, protection of landscape, historic places, as well as water and biodiversity conservation. Protection from fire remained an overarching theme.

The visionary and robust deliberations of the LCC ultimately led to a progressive expansion of Victoria’s magnificent National Parks and Reserves.

In 1956, when the first National Parks Legislation was enacted, only 13 Parks existed including the iconic Mt Buffalo and Wilsons Prom. But by 1975, when the first of the LCC’s recommendations were tabled in parliament, that number had increased to 26, totalling over 226,000 ha.

The LCC morphed into the Environment Conservation Council (ECC) in 1997 and then into the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) in 2001.

By 2024, a bit over half of Victoria’s public land estate of 7.1 million Ha was set aside as Parks and Conservation Reserves with the remainder as State forests.

New parks in western Victoria around the Wombat Forest have recently been added and some controversial parks in the Central Highlands are proposed and being vigorously debated.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zt7JwloS6gpO78WUfckkl03gO_TGWh5Z/view

Forest hydrology is a complex science but, put simply, water yield or stream flows from forested catchments depends on rainfall patterns, droughts, soil type, soil depth, forest type and forest age.

Decades of pioneering research by the MMBW have shown that wet mountain ash forests consume nearly 70% of the rainfall leaving the remainder available for streamflow.

Mountain ash forests are very susceptible to bushfire and are generally killed, but they regenerate rapidly from seed.

The younger and more vigorous regrowth, with thousands of stems per hectare, intercept and slurp up much more water compared to older forests with large and widely spaced trees.

This graph published nearly 40 years ago by George Kuczera illustrates the dramatic response in water yield from mountain ash forests as they age.

The important thing to note is that water yield drops sharply immediately after bushfires when the trees are killed, and vigorous regrowth forest becomes established. Streamflow remains low for 20-30 years and then slowly recovers.

A major bushfire in Melbourne’s forested water catchments would have serious consequences for the city’s water supplies. It’s been calculated that a major fire could reduce stream flows by as much as 60% and that it would take about 150 years for the catchments to return to pre-fire levels.

The 1st of September marks the official beginning of Spring in the southern hemisphere, and wattles are starting to flower in the bush and in gardens around the country.

Wattles feature prominently in Australian ceremonies, literature, poetry, art and song from the 1830s to the early 1900s.

Noted naturalist Archibald James Campbell established the Victorian Wattle Club in 1899 and organised excursions each spring in search of wattle.

In the early days after Federation in 1901, arbor days, along with bird and wattle days, became popular in Australian schools.

Later in 1908, Campbell made an impassioned speech promoting wattle as our national floral emblem and momentum grew.

The first celebrations of Wattle Day occurred in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia in 1910 and in Western Australia and Queensland in 1912.

By January 1913, the Commonwealth Coat of Arms was gazetted, with wattle featuring prominently in the design together with the iconic kangaroo and emu.

The rise of nationalism that began with Federation continued into the First World War, reinforced sentiment for home and country through images of wattle.

Wattle was a poignant reminder on postcards and letters send to the Diggers in the trenches.

But the push for a national wattle day petered out after the war ended in 1918 and remained more-or-less dormant throughout the rest of the mid-twentieth century.

However, there was a resurgence of national pride in 1975 when the golden wattle featured in the new Order of Australia medals which replaced the old British Imperial awards.

Green and Gold were adopted as our national colours in 1984 and have been worn proudly by Olympic teams ever since.

During the 1988 Bicentenary celebrations, golden wattle was officially gazetted as Australia’s national floral emblem.

There had been a confusion of dates used beforehand, as each state tried to coincide with local flowering patterns, but finally National Wattle Day was officially declared as the 1st of September by the Australian Governor General in 1992.

But despite all this, a National Day of Celebration for our magnificent wattles has never really taken hold…

Photo: Wattle Day, Sydney, 1935. Source Wikipedia

This new self-guided walking map has been prepared to tell some of the story of the Forestry School and the grounds at Creswick. Its based on the 2017 work by Gerry Fahey from the University of Melbourne.

https://walkingmaps.com.au/walk/5969

This new self-guided walking map can be used around Sawpit Gully at Creswick. Its based on the commemorative John la Gerche trail established in 1998 by VSF lecturer Ron Hateley and students of University of Melbourne.

https://walkingmaps.com.au/walk/5968

Deadly bushfires in the summer of 1943/44, killed 51 people, injured another 700 and destroyed over 650 buildings.

In particular, the loss of 13 lives at Yallourn on February 14, 1944, and the impact on the State’s electricity supplies when the critical brown coal fields caught alight brought these bushfires into sharp focus.

There was justifiable public outcry at the lack of government action after the similar events five years earlier in 1939.

Premier Sir Albert Dunstan and Minister for Forests Sir Albert Lind, who had both delayed legislative changes in Parliament, decided there was no alternative but to ask Judge Stretton to chair a second Royal Commission.

Stretton’s report returned to his earlier themes and once again highlighted the lack of cohesive firefighting ability outside the Melbourne area.

After nearly six months of debate and argy-bargy in State Parliament, legislation to establish the Country Fire Authority (CFA) was finally passed in two stages on 22 November and 6 December 1944.

The Chairman and Board members were appointed on 19 December 1944. The Premier announced that Mr Alexander Mercer King of Ballarat was to be appointed Chairman of the CFA Board for the first year.

The Board of the new authority met for the first time shortly after on 3 January 1945.

On 2nd April 1945, the Country Fire Authority Act came into effect, and all previous urban and rural bushfire brigades in country Victoria ceased to legally exist.

But because of the complicated politics of the merger there were two CFA Chief Officers for a time, with Alexander McPherson representing urban brigades and Charles Alfred Daw for rural brigades.

The Forests Commission held two seats on the new CFA Board with Herbert Duncan Galbraith and Joseph Firth. The FCV Chief Fire Officer, Alf Lawrence, was appointed later in 1946.

It took another 13 years until 1958 before the Forests and CFA Legislation were revised which gave clarity to the roles of each agency as well as the Chief Fire Officers.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11375460

Main Photo: L-R: Back Row – Geoffrey Graeme Sinclair (Secretary), Angus A. Cameron, E. Buckland, George Stewart, Joseph Firth (FCV), Charles Alfred Daw (Chief Officer – Rural), Alexander McPherson (Chief Officer – Urban). Front Row – T. H. Grigg, W.S. Slater, Herbert Duncan Galbraith (FCV), P. Slouch, W. Charles Moyle, Alexander Mercer King (Chairman).

Australia had compulsory training in the Citizens Military Forces (CMF) at various times between 1910 and 1945, but after the Second World War it had two very different National Service schemes.

The first began in 1951, coinciding with the Korean War, and ran until 1959 with a total of 227,000 men passing through the scheme, which required six months recruit training in the Navy, Army or Air Force followed by five years as a reservist. Every 18-year-old was registered, and many Forests Commission staff and forestry school students were involved in some way.

The second, and more controversial scheme, operated from 1964 to 1972, with men aged 20 being eligible for conscription of two years of National Service by a birthday ballot, where numbered wooden marbles were drawn by lottery from a barrel.

A total of 63,735 were called-up and 15,381 Nashos served in Vietnam, with another 150 in Borneo. The remainder served in support units in Australia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

Tragically, more than 200 Nashos were killed in Vietnam, plus another two in Borneo. More than 1200 were wounded on active service.

But unlike the records for other conflicts, the names of Forests Commission staff who served are patchy. I’m aware of the following 1960’s national servicemen:

Rob Youl – Graduated from the Victorian School of Forestry in 1964 and served for two years during 1965/66 in Australia with the Royal Australian Engineers at the Officer Training Unit at Scheyville in NSW. Rob continued to serve in the Army Reserve for many decades and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and as Commanding Officer of the 91 Forestry Squadron.

Peter Bray – Graduated from the Victorian School of Forestry in 1966 and served in Vietnam at Vung Tau in 1967/68 as a Captain the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group.

John Bywater – Graduated from the Victorian School of Forestry in 1966 and served in Vietnam during 1969/70 with 1st Australian Civil Affairs Unit.

Ray Borschmann – Graduated from the Victorian School of Forestry in 1966 and served for two years in Australia with Royal Australian Engineers – Fire Service.

John Morey – Served in Vietnam as a medic with 1st Australian Field Hospital in 1968/69.  John returned to his previous job with FCV in sirex control and later joined 91 Forestry Sqn.

John Hosie – Served in Vietnam during 1967/69 with 17th Construction Squadron RAE. He later worked as Admin officer with FCV.

John Wilson – Served in Vietnam during 1967/68 with 32 Small Ship Squadron (AV 1353 Harry Chauvel). He later worked as a forest overseer at Stawell and retired in 1993.

Athol Sumner – Served in Vietnam 1967/68 as a Lance-Corporal with 7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He later worked in FCV Research Branch and Assessment Branch as a technical officer. He measured forest growth research trials run by Bill Incoll.

Des Collins (pictured) – FCV machine operator at Daylesford – Served in Vietnam during 1966/67 with 1st Armoured Personnel Carrier Squadron. Was APC driver in the battle of Long Tan on 18 August 1966. Des died in the Greendale bushfire with Alan Lynch on 8 January 1983, just weeks before Ash Wednesday.

I’m certain I have missed a few so please let me know.

https://victoriasforestsbushfireheritage.com/2022/08/18/des-collins-long-tan/

There has been a cold snap recently and everyone knows that the costs of home heating this winter have risen sharply.

Firewood has traditionally been a cheap fuel, particularly for country folk… but it’s getting expensive now and harder to source.

But how does firewood compare with mains gas or reverse cycle aircon?

Comparing apples with apples is tricky so I have calculated the energy running costs on a per Megajoule basis. I haven’t included the capital, maintenance or depreciation cost of various heating systems. Warning… mathematics ahead!!!

To give some context and putting aside the complex science of thermodynamics and energy loses for one moment, boiling one litre of water in an electric kettle uses about one-third of a Megajoule of energy.

Turning up the thermostat, or putting more wood on the fire, will put more Megajoules into your room per hour, and the running costs will go up.

And let’s not go down the renewability, sustainability, greenhouse emissions rabbit hole for the moment.

Firewood.

Buying firewood is problematic. I have always advocated buying air-dried firewood by weight rather than more dubious cubic metres or chords. And I’m also very wary when there is too much bark on it.

One cubic metre of solid wood in a standing tree or round log generally expands in volume up to 1.5 m3 when its cut into blocks, then split and neatly stacked. Or as much as 2.5 m3 when loosely chucked into a pile. That’s an awful lot of fresh air.

Therefore, what looks like one cubic metre of firewood in a tightly stacked, and slightly heaped, 6×4 trailer may only be equivalent to about three quarters of a cubic metre of solid wood.

Also, green wood can be more than 50% water, whereas air-dried firewood is ideally between 10-15%, while oven-dried wood has none. A large amount of energy is wasted trying to burn wet wood.

Getting a load of air-dried mixed species firewood cut, split and delivered to your home from a reputable timber merchant has recently increased in price from about $120 per cubic metre to about $300 per cubic metre. The dramatic increase has been caused by the closure of Victoria’s State forests to timber harvesting from 1 January, and firewood is now being imported from NSW forests.

Then there are always arguments about red gum verses mixed species, and you may find this a bit surprising… but it’s really important… ALL eucalypts have approximately the same calorific value, or energy content per kilogram, irrespective of species.

The energy content of eucalypt hardwood is about 18 Megajoules per kilogram @10% moisture content, or air-dried. Softwood pine has a high resin content and therefore has more energy per kg. And stinky brown coal briquettes had 26.6 Megajoules per kg.

But the density of air-dried eucalypts varies enormously from 673 kg/m3 for mountain ash up to 1121 kg/m3 for grey box. Mixed species firewood averages out at about 1000 kg/m3.  So, a load of grey box in the trailer weighs nearly TWICE as much as the mountain ash for the equivalent amount of space.

So, if you are buying firewood on a volume or cubic metre basis it makes perfect sense to buy the heaviest, or densest, wood you can afford.

There are also a few other things to consider like ease of splitting and ignition, charring, tar content, burning time, coals, pesky splinters, manual handling, storage space, disposing of messy ash and potential smoke (mostly a problem from burning green wood).

Assuming you can still get the old delivered price of $120 per cubic metre (~750 kg of air-dried wood) which equals 16 cents per kg, then one Megajoule of energy from air dried firewood costs 0.89 cents (16÷18).

The more expensive wood at $300 per cubic metre (~750kg air dried wood) increases to 40 cents per kg, so one Megajoule of energy from air dried firewood costs 2.22 cents (40÷18).

By comparison, firewood in bags at the petrol station costs $1.50 per kg so one Megajoule is a hefty 8.33 cents (150÷18).

And a modern firewood heater burning air-dry wood gets about 70% efficiency. Open fires not so much – maybe only 20-30%.

So, the costs of one Megajoule of usable energy output from burning air-dry firewood in a wood heater varies from 1.27 cents (0.89 @70%) to 3.17 cents (2.22 @70%) depending on whether you paid $120/m3 or $300/m3.

A wood fire is not something you can turn on and off easily like gas or electricity. If it’s cold outside, and I’m home all day, with the wood heater settings on low and our large lounge room at a comfy 20 degrees, I might burn up to 50 kg of firewood (or 900 Megajoules). This equals 8 dollars of wood at the old price of 16 cents per kg, or less than one dollar per hour.

Natural gas.

For those fortunate enough to have access to natural gas, it retails about 3.7 cents per Megajoule (forget about the supply charges for a moment).

And a modern gas space heater can be about 78% efficient. The other 22% goes straight up the chimney.

Therefore, one Megajoule of energy from mains gas heating costs about 4.7 cents (3.7 @ 78%)

The large Rinnai 1005FT gas space heater in our family room puts out about 30 Megajoules of energy, and costs about 141 cents per hour (30 x 4.7) if its running on high. Obviously, if the thermostat gets turned down it uses a lot less gas.

Reverse cycle air conditioning.

Electricity prices vary throughout day, but in the evening until about 11 pm when off-peak kicks-in, they are about 66 cents per Kilowatt Hour (KWH) – excluding poles and wires charges.

And one KWH equals 3.6 Megajoules of energy. Therefore, one Megajoule of electrical energy costs about 18.3 cents (66 ÷ 3.6).

If you have a solar system with the old 66 cents/Kw feed-in tariff or a battery, the costs of electricity change considerably.

But here is the bizarre bit. A reverse cycle air conditioner acts as a “heat pump” moving heat from one place to another and can be 400% (or 4 times) efficient.

So, one Megajoule of energy output from a reverse cycle heating only costs about 4.6 cents (18.3 @ 400%).

Our Fujitsu 7.1KW split system is suitable for medium space and, on the maximum setting, puts out 25.6 Megajoules of heat, which costs about 118 cents per hour (25.6 x 4.6). And just like the gas heater, if the temperature setting is reduced the energy consumption goes down too.

Bar radiators.

The old-style bar radiators were 100% efficient because they converted all the electrical energy into heat.

And one watt equals one joule per second, so a 2400-watt radiator suitable for a small room puts out 8.64 Megajoules of energy (2400 x 60 x 60), which costs about 161 cents per hour (8.64 x 18.6 cents).

Summary – energy output.

So, there you have it …

• Firewood in wood heater (@ $120 /m3) = 1.27 cents per Mj.
• Firewood in wood heater (@ $300 /m3) = 3.17 cents per Mj.
• Mains gas space heater = 4.7 cents per Mj.
• Reverse cycle air conditioning = 4.6 cents per Mj.
• Bar radiator = 18.6 cents per Mj.

If you still have access to a bit of bush and can legally cut firewood yourself, the costs might only be $20 /m3 to cover petrol for the chainsaw and your car to go and collect it.

However, for those without the means to collect wood themselves, the recent doubling in the retail price of firewood has hugely diminished the benefits of heating your home with wood, but it’s still one of the cheapest.

Buying cheap firewood on the back of a battered ute, or for cash from some bloke in the pub, or advertised anonymously on Facebook, must be of dubious origin – either knocked-off from State forests, National parks, or roadsides, or maybe cut without a council permit from private land. It’s worth asking where it came from rather than buying stolen goods. The demise of commercial firewood contractors in Victoria’s native State forests will undoubtedly return us to the lawless bad-old-days. But don’t get me started…

In practical terms, heating large rooms in my home with either mains gas, a wood heather or reverse cycle costs less than one dollar per hour. I accept that many other things come into play like how well the room is sealed from drafts and insulated from the cold outside.

A wise old District Forester once said to me… there are four jolly good “warms” in a load of firewood. First, you get to cut it, then you get to split it, then you get to stack it, before you finally get to burn it…

I’m absolutely certain someone will want to challenge my logic and arithmetic. But, in the meantime, try to stay warm as best you can…

Smokey Bear, the icon of the U.S. Forest Service, is the longest running wildfire prevention campaign in United States history.

The character was authorised on August 9, 1944, a date now celebrated as his official birthday.

He was originally drawn by Artist Albert Staehle complete with his trademark campaign hat and jeans.

Three years later, Smokey’s slogan — “Remember … only YOU can prevent forest fires” — made its debut.

Over the decades, several artists drew Smokey, and he evolved slightly in appearance.

Smokey Bear’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1950s and ‘60s. He appeared in children’s colouring books and kids could write to Smokey and receive a Junior Ranger kit, complete with a badge shaped like the Forest Service shield. He even had his own animated cartoon series on television.

In the spring of 1950, a bear cub was rescued from a fire in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico, treated for his burns, and then transported to Washington, DC, to serve as the living symbol of Smokey Bear at the National Zoo. This bear received so much mail that the U.S. Post Office gave Smokey his own zip code—20252.

Smokey Bear made a goodwill visit to Victoria in 1977.

So, happy birthday Smokey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear