The Otway Ranges is characterised by steep terrain, wet weather and thick forest.
An early but unsuccessful attempt was made between 1854 and 1861 to bring Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) railway sleepers to Melbourne in small coastal ships from the Otway Ranges. The voyage was perilous because there were no suitable harbours, and relics of old piers at Wye River and Kennett River still exist.
However, with the completion of railway lines from Colac to Forrest in 1890, and later with an extension to Beech Forest in 1902, sawmilling in the Otway Ranges began to expand.
The sawmills were mostly small, isolated settlements established in the forest closer to the timber resources because it was easier and more efficient to cart sawn produce to a railhead rather than heavy logs.
In the end, as many as 400 itinerant sawmills were scattered throughout the bush, linked by over 400 km of timber tramways to roads or rail lines.
William R. Henry was a plumber by trade who had been successful at the Kalgoorlie and Ballarat goldfields before buying into the sawmilling business in the Otways.
Henry’s No. 1 Mill was established in 1904 deep in the watershed of the West Barwon River. It was one of the largest sawmills in the area and could cut as much as 23 m3 per day. It was connected by a narrow-gauge timber tramline to the railhead at Forrest, ten kilometres to the north. The line included about 57 timber bridges and an impressive 960 foot tunnel at Noonday creek. Several steam engines rode the tracks, the first one in 1911 was known as Tom Thumb.
The Henry Mill had a permanent population of around 100 people and the settlement featured about 30 rough timber huts for single men and modest wooden houses for married men and their families. It also had with a boarding house, stables, school, billiard saloon, baker, store and post office complete with its own franking stamp.
Mail was transported to the mill on a four-wheel trolley powered by 600cc motorcycle engine with a Harley Davidson gear box.
The whistle at the mill was an ex-naval foghorn which was said to be so loud that the entire region could set their clocks. It’s also claimed it could be heard as far away as Bass Strait and became a hazard to shipping.
There were several other Henry sawmills along the line as part of his growing enterprise. But floods, landslips and bushfires all had a major impact on bush sawmills, including those in the Otway Ranges.
From the 1940s, 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 Forests Commission 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 memory of the loss of 69 forest sawmills and 71 lives in the 1939 bushfires together with Judge Streeton’s Royal Commission recommendations were still fresh. And despite strong and vocal opposition, the 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.
Photos: State Library Victoria
Sawdust and Steam. A History of Sawmilling in the East Otway Ranges. 1850-2010. Norman Houghton. 2011
The battle of Lone Pine at Gallipoli is deeply etched in the psyche of Australians, New Zealanders and the Turks. It took place between 6 and 10 August 1915 with tragic losses of over 2,000 ANZACs and a further 7,000 Turkish soldiers.
Over the decades the battle became increasingly symbolic and many memorial parks in towns and cities around Australia were planted with a specimen or grove of “Lone Pines”, usually said to have been propagated from the original tree.
But there is an intriguing and little-known puzzle about the true botanical identity of the original Lone Pine. There are, in fact, three species that can claim some connection to the historic battlefield. You can read more in the Wikipedia story.
The original Lone Pine tree was a Turkish Pine (Pinus brutia) which stood on a prominent ridge and was a reference point for soldiers on both sides until it was destroyed by gunfire.
Turkish Pine is native to the Gallipoli Peninsula and scattered specimens grew across the hills of the battlefield and all the trees, except the famous one, were cut down by the Turks for construction of their defensive trenches.
Sergeant Thomas Keith McDowell collected a cone from this tree and put it in his knapsack, where it remained until he returned to Victoria after the war.
About 10 years later, four seedlings were successfully raised by Emma Gray of Grassmere near Warrnambool using the remaining seeds from the cone that Keith brought back.
The seedlings were planted at Wattle Park in Melbourne (8 May 1933), the Shrine of Remembrance (11 June 1933), the Soldiers Memorial Hall at “The Sisters” near Terang (18 June 1933) and the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens (23 January 1934). Only the pines at Warrnambool and Wattle Park now survive.
In 1964, the President of Warrnambool Branch of Legacy Australia, Tom Griffiths, proposed at its Perth Conference to raise and distribute seedlings of the Lone Pine in time to mark 50 years since the Gallipoli landings.
The project was strongly supported by delegates and some cones of Pinus brutia were collected from trees at “The Sisters” and the Warrnambool Gardens and sent to Ben Benallack at the Forests Commission in Melbourne. But the species is notoriously difficult to grow, and the seeds failed to germinate.
The Melbourne Branch of Legacy collected more cones from the Lone Pine tree near the Shrine of Remembrance and, this time, about 150 seedlings were successfully raised at the Forests Commission’s nursery at Macedon under the direction of Dr Ron Grose, Director of Silviculture.
One of these original seedlings was planted at the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick in 1965. The tree was later dedicated with a plaque by the RSL in 1975.
Disappointingly, the top was busted in 1976 by some over overly exuberant students on their way home from the Farmers Arms Hotel late one night.
The spindly tree is still alive but has struggled to thrive in the overcrowded arboretum. It can be found near the pathway leading up the hill from the Alexander Peacock Gates to the main school building.
The austral grasstree (Xanthorrhoea australis) is commonly found growing in heathlands on poor sandy soils along the east coastal strip from NSW to SA, as well as Tasmania.
They are highly susceptible to the soil-borne disease Phytophthora cinnamomi.
In 1882, the Victorian Inspector of Forests William Ferguson made a field survey of the Heytesbury Forest in the south-west of the state. It was estimated there were 60,000 acres of grasstree plains thought to be of little commercial or agricultural use.
The Aboriginals had long made use of the grasstree resin and some early settlers were quick to realise its potential.
On the goldfields, hollow stems were used for makeshift waterpipe.
The resin was very versatile and could be used for making industrial alcohol and cheap lacquer for furniture and floors. It was used as a coating on brass instruments and for preserving cans of meat; as stove polish; as a sealing wax, caulking for boats, church incense, sizing paper, perfumery, soap and even making gramophone records.
On treatment with nitric acid, the resin also yields a large quantity of picric acid. There was community outrage when it was learned that in the three years prior to World War I, Germany had imported approximately 1500 tonnes of grass-tree resin suspected of being used to manufacture explosives.
There were a couple of unsuccessful attempts to commercialise the grasstrees at Heytesbury.
But in about 1908, the Victorian Department of Agriculture cleared 1000 acres to establish an experimental farm and as a result some land was made available for selection. The first scheme was deemed a failure, but it was followed by a much larger land clearing program in the 1950s using modern heavy machinery.
Meanwhile, the Forests Department had long opposed applications land clearing and commercial grass tree harvesting in an attempt to protect commercial quantities of timber at Heytesbury.
Just about every Forest District had one… the State forest drive.
Most people enjoy a leisurely drive in the country, or through the bush, which includes a scenic spot for short walk or a picnic.
Staff have always taken pride in their patch of forest and were keen to make the bush available to locals and visitors. And what better way than to develop a forest drive.
Some forest drives were promoted with no more than a photocopied A4 sheet of paper with a map and maybe some signposts along the route. But drivers not only had to contend with bored or carsick kids in the back seat, there were also dusty or muddy gravel roads to negotiate and the ever-present fear of unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a thundering big log truck.
Some larger coloured mapsheets were produced by the Drafting Branch for major tourist destinations like the Grampians, Central Highlands and Toolangi.
In the late 1970s, the Forests Commission responded to the growing interest and developed six major Forest Drives around the state. They were paired with large A1 sized coloured posters which became very popular and were widely sold.
There was a resurgence in the 1980s but many of the Forest Drives seem to have been abandoned over the years.
About 20 years ago, I was filling my car at my local petrol station during Easter and watching the endless stream of caravans and campers heading on their way east to Lakes Entrance and beyond. Meanwhile, I could see the mountains and foothills to my north, and I had a “brain fart” that a hinterland drive might be an idea to showcase our wonderful State Forests.
Some cash was secured from somewhere (I can’t quite remember now), and Suzette Fullerton from Traralgon enthusiastically took up the challenge.
The project was different from many other Forest Drives because it was developed very closely with VicRoads, local municipalities, tourism authorities and small businesses. Consultants with expertise with “tourism products” were wisely engaged.
The final result, the West Gippsland Hinterland Drive, far surpassed anything that I had originally imagined.
The Hinterland Drive is a return route from Melbourne that is best savoured over a couple of days. It combines great scenery, good food, wineries, specialty shops and accommodation. Importantly, it features many “wow factor” sites in the bush including a walk to the Ada Tree, the old trestle bridge at Noojee, the opportunity to stop for a pint of cleansing ale and a selfie with the dinosaur at the historic Nooj Pub is a must, and then a walk to the spectacular Toorongo Falls.
The Drive then follows the bitumen road from Icy Creek to Mt Baw Baw via Tanjil Bren, then back down the gravel South Face Road, with a stroll to Mushroom Rocks, a bite to eat at the eclectic Stockyard in Rawson Village and ending at historic Walhalla, before returning to the Princes Highway. There are a couple of alternative side routes from Warragul and Drouin available.
Suzette later developed the Aberfeldy Four-Wheel-Drive Route for the more adventurous. I felt very proud of her achievements.
The routes are well promoted on tourism websites, but disappointingly there is no acknowledgment of the role the Department played in funding, researching and developing them.
Bushfire behaviour is influenced by many factors including temperature, relative humidity (RH), forest type, fuel quantity and fuel dryness, topography and even slope. Wind has a dominant effect on the Rate of Spread (ROS), as well as fire size, shape and direction.
Temperature and relative humidity have major impacts on fuel dryness and therefore upon the availability of fuel for combustion.
The amount of fine fuel available can increase rapidly from nearly zero when fuel moisture content is more than 16% after rain or a heavy morning dew, to many tonnes per hectare as fuel dries out later in the day and the moisture content drops below 9%. This explosive escalation in the amount of available fuel can happen over a few hours on hot and windy days.
A sling psychrometer is a simple device for determining air temperature and relative humidity. It contains two thermometers, one of which is covered with a wick saturated with ambient temperature liquid water. These two thermometers are called dry bulb and wet bulb. When the sling psychrometer is spun rapidly in the air, the evaporation of the water from the wick causes the wet bulb thermometer to read lower than the dry bulb thermometer.
After the psychrometer has been spun long enough for the thermometers to reach equilibrium temperatures, the unit is stopped, and the two thermometers are quickly read.
A psychrometric scale on the side of the instrument is then used to convert the dry bulb temperature TDB and the wet bulb temperature TWB into humidity information. The wet bulb temperature is approximately equal to the adiabatic saturation temperature.
The thermometers fold back into the plastic handle when not in use.
The timber industry in Victoria was arguably very lopsided with the Forests Commission, as a large government-owned monopoly, controlling forest licencing, allocation and supply of timber to sawmillers.
In most cases the relationship between sawmillers and the local District Forester were cordial and business like, but it was clearly an uneven one at times.
It’s also fair to say that sawmilling in Victoria was primarily a male domain. Women were involved, but they tended to play a lesser role in the business.
Julia Marion Harvey Hale grew to become a formidable legend in Victorian forestry and sawmilling circles and was not going to be intimidated by mere District Foresters, or even the Commissioners.
Born in 1907 in South Australia, Julia became involved in several sawmilling enterprises in northeast Victoria, the first being with a 25% holding in a small mill on the tablelands south of Whitfield in 1936. Her business partner, Arthur Dye, originally came from Gembrook, but the arrangement was short-lived with the sale of the mill in 1937.
Undeterred, Julia Hale formed another business partnership in 1936 with sawmiller James Moore which proved more successful. Moore had ten years’ experience in the Gembrook district, and they started Myrrhee sawmills on Fifteen Mile Creek, north-west of the earlier Tablelands Sawmil in August 1936 to cut timber off private property.
Moore ran the sawmill while Hale the controlling partner oversaw the sales, marketing and financial side of the business. In May 1938, the mill was moved to a new cutting area on State Forest and the company purchased its first crawler tractor, but the forest was steep and rocky making the mill barely profitable.
Meanwhile, Julia became involved with her father and a consortium of others in a murky scheme to buy 6000 acres of forested Crown Land in Tasmania. Normally, the sale would have been refused because of the standing timber, but it was approved in 1938 following the alleged intervention by the Tasmanian Minister for Forests, Robert Cosgrove. This transaction, and several others like it, led to a Royal Commission into forestry administration in 1945. One of the key recommendations was the formation of the Forestry Commission of Tasmania, based upon the Victorian model.
The Black Friday bushfires of 1939 forced an urgent need for timber salvage in the Central Highlands and led to a major shift for the entire Victorian timber industry.
Julia Hale acted quickly, and on 20 February 1939 while the bushfire smoke was still swirling and the Stretton Royal Commission had begun, she lodged an application with the Forests Commission for a 1000-acre allocation at the head of the West Tanjil River north of Noojee. The mill was up and running by January 1940, but constructing access to the mill by either roads or tramways remained a major impediment.
Julia then applied in December 1939 for a second logging area just over the ridge from the first mill in the headwaters of the Thomson River to access fire killed mountain ash, shining gum and woollybutt.
But financial pressures on her ventures were starting to show, so she applied to the Commission for a salvage loan of £1000. But other setbacks, combined with the realignment and slow construction of access roads hurt her bottom line and Julia’s crawler tractor, valued at £2000, was offered as security of this and other loans.
At the time, the mill was supplying sawn timber to the Commission’s seasoning works at Newport, so loan repayments were deducted from the amount paid for the timber.
But Julia’s misfortune didn’t stop there. A major labour shortage caused by the war was made worse by the remoteness of the mill, so a boarding house was built in the hope of attracting enough labour to run her operations. More loans were made, but snow and winter road closures combined with a continuing shortage of labour led to the closure of the No.1 mill in May 1942.
Meanwhile, a new mill was established at Nariel, just south of Corryong, in 1946 to access large stands of high quality old-growth wollybutt near Mount Pinnibar.
The Commission controlled the first section of the road construction and her licence agreement required Julia to extend the logging road at her own cost. But by February 1947, Julia Hale was again in financial difficulties, and she approached the Minister of Forests, Bill Barry, for assistance by getting the Commission pay her to construct the road as a contractor.
In January 1948, W. E. Flanigan applied to the Commission for a logging area in the headwaters of Emu Creek near Milawa. It became apparent to the Commission that Julia Hale was providing the money and was the major partner in the new enterprise. Flanigan later sold his share to Julia and retired in 1950, but the Emu Valley mill burnt down in June 1951.
It was around this time that Forests Commission officers began to have serious reservations about the viability of Julia Hale’s logging and sawmilling operations in both the Central Highlands and Myree. This led to growing concerns about the security of the loans it had made to Julia.
By 1953, the Commission believed that there was a significant sum of money still owing on her loans due to short deliveries of timber to the Newport seasoning works, but Julia considered the total debt had been repaid. The relationship was far from cordial and a series of savage letters was exchanged. But in 1961, the Commission wrote-off the debt. There seems little doubt that poor record keeping and accounting methods by the Commission had contributed to the discrepancy. However, the fallout from the quarrel caused untold and ongoing friction between Julia Hale and the Forests Commission.
But the mill at Nariel finally made Julia prosperous. The post-war boom was in full swing, and the mill had secured some valuable supply contracts.
Julia Hale was in her early forties and in the prime of her life. She made regular visits to the Nariel mill in her white “Silver Cloud” Rolls Royce from her substantial home and farm property known as “Buckanbe”, at 32 Orion Road in Vermont.
Always expensively and fashionably dressed in English tweed skirts and silk blouses, accompanied with sensible shoes, she carried the air of the English aristocracy and was equally at home in the city or the country. While undoubtedly a tough and forthright businesswoman, Julia also took a strong interest in the welfare of her workers and their families.
In January 1950, the Commission introduced a new royalty equation system which took account of the distance that logs were hauled from the forest to the sawmill, the standard of the forest roads, the quality and size of the logs together with the distance to central markets in Melbourne. It was intended to reduce wastage but also be simple and equitable for all sawmillers across Victoria.
But in 1952, further tension between Julia Hale and the Forests Commission surfaced over who was responsible for measuring logs and determining inputs into the Royalty Equation. The matter was escalated in 1954 to her local MP, a prominent barrister and Corryong grazier, Thomas Walter Mitchell, who was no friend of the Commission, and he raised the matter with the Premier John Caine in State Parliament.
The minor bickering escalated into a major dispute by early 1957 over Julia’s claim for a refund of royalty to the tune of £75,000, which she claimed was overpaid because of an incorrect road classification under the new royalty system. The subsequent refusal by Julia to sign a new log licence agreement led to the suspension of all harvesting and log supply by the District Forester.
By 1962, the dispute went to arbitration with hearings at Corryong. High profile and expensive lawyers were engaged but the result was a disaster for the Commission, with Julia Hale being awarded substantial compensation. An appeal by the Commission was unsuccessful, but the wound continued to fester until Julia Hale’s death from breast cancer on 19 October 1964.
From the very start, Julia Hale seems to have avoided direct dealings with her local district forester, who would have normally been the first point of contact for any sawmiller. She adopted a “take no prisoners approach” and always went straight to the top and thought nothing of lubricating important relationships with a case of Scotch whisky discreetly delivered to a home address.
It became part of Forests Commission folklore that when Julia made personal visits to the Commissioners in Head Office in Melbourne from her lavish estate in Vermont, to pay her royalty and loan debts, she deliberately parked her Rolls Royce in the Chairman’s carpark out the front. It’s also said that Julia regarded some Forests Commission officers as a bit of “sport”, and she had little tolerance for any bureaucrat who got in her way. While some senior male public servants in the Commerce Branch were said to scurry whenever she arrived in the building.
Julia never married, or had children, and in the wind-up of her estate she first provided generously for her family, including her brothers and sisters, but also for her employees.
Somewhat ironically, given her long running and fractured relationship with foresters and the Forests Commission, Julia Hale directed in her will that a $1M bequest to be made to the Forestry Department at the University of Melbourne.
This is an abridged version of a more comprehensive account by Peter Evans which was presented at the ninth conference of the Australian Forest History Society at Mount Gambier in October 2015.
Imagine a machine that uses solar energy to remove carbon from the air and turns it into a beautiful, strong and sustainable building material.
Oh wait… that’s what trees are…
Today is World Forestry Day and what better way to celebrate than to acknowledge this magnificent Sugar Gum (Eucalyptus cladocalyx) which grows in front of the historic School of Botany at the University of Melbourne.
Thought to be over 110 years old, the tree is 25 metres tall and has a diameter over 2 metres.
The bean-counting folks at the Uni calculated that this tree uptakes about 282 kilograms of carbon each year, offsetting the amount released by three people breathing.
The tree has been listed by the National Trust of state significance.
A large granite outcrop at the headwaters of the Mississippi Creek in the Colquhoun State forest, just west of Lakes Entrance, was identified in the early 1890s.
It’s said to be of the same geological formation as the pink granite at Wilsons Promontory, Gabo Island and northern Tasmania.
The beautiful granite will take a high polish and can be used for pillars, casements, sills, steps, or any work that needed a durable and ornamental stone.
In the years following the goldrush, ships entering the Gippsland Lakes from the southern ocean were subject to the vagaries of shifting sands, floods, winds and tides.
Works began in the 1870s to create an artificial entry and navigable access to the inland lakes system. Two rows of wooden piers were installed on each side of the new entrance and stabilised with stone dropped in between the rows of timber.
But over time, the stone sank into the sand or was displaced by currents and had to be replaced. Teredo worms (termites of the sea) ate what was left of the timbers. Something more permanent was needed for the busy port.
In 1890, a surveyor was sent to take depth soundings of the north arm of the lake and survey the line for a new tramway through the bush to the site of the intended quarries.
Despite the early expectations for the granite in the Mississippi Creek, the stone for reinforcing the piers was brought by ship from Refuge Cove at Wilsons Promontory, and later by bullock dray from a quarry at Wy Yung near Bairnsdale, until at least 1900.
The development of the Mississippi Creek Quarry seems to have begun in early 1904 by local contractors, the Coate Brothers.
Cutting the hard rock used the “hammer and tap” method. Two men took turns with sledgehammers to hit a steel drill held by a third man slowly rotating the drill bit so its didn’t get stuck in the rock. Once the drill was about 2 feet deep into the rock another hole would be started nearby. The holes were then packed with explosives and detonated to crack large blocks of granite from the working face of the quarry. If necessary, the blocks would be drilled and blasted again until they were of a workable size and could be trimmed to shape.
Coate Bros built a 3’6″ gauge steel tramway 13 km through State Forest in 1910 to transport the large blocks of granite, which could weigh as much as 5 tons, to the head of the North Arm near Corner Landing. Rock was then loaded by crane and transported by barge a further 6km to the entrance of the Gippsland Lakes where they had the contract to convert the eastern pier from timber to stone and concrete.
At least one load of 60 tons went on the downhill run per day to the barge landing, but occasionally trucks would derail, and the rock tipped into the bush where they still lay.
Later, some stone was used in Melbourne buildings, the most notable being in 1926 with the Masonic Club in Flinders Street. This use extended the life of the quarry when the civil works at the entrance were complete.
Records indicate that the quarry last operated in 1946 for cartage of some more stone to the eastern wharf at Lakes Entrance. The steel tramway was then salvaged, and the quarry abandoned which became slowly overgrown with scrub and blackberries.
In July 2000, the Federal Government was making money available under the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) process with “structural adjustment” packages to offset the reduction in sawlogs and corresponding loss of jobs. The Feds were looking for “shovel ready” community projects in East Gippsland.
I’m a keen bike rider and a trail from the Mississippi Quarry to Lakes Entrance had been an idea for a while. I was also the Regional Forest Manager for Gippsland at the time but couldn’t secure funding from the Department.
It all came about in a short phone call, very late one Friday afternoon, when a colleague from Melbourne, Richard Wadsworth, rang looking for projects and about $1M fell into my lap. That’s the way funding bids worked sometimes. I followed up with some paperwork and a formal application the following week, but it was as easy as that…
Some of the cash went on the existing rail trail, while Andrew Sharpe and Rob Stewart from Bairnsdale planned and delivered a new project which included a 5km link up a steep hill to the East Gippsland Rail Trail at the junction with Seaton Track.
Most of the old wooden bridges on the tramway had collapsed and needed to be replaced. Remnants of steel rail line and lumps of stone can be found along the track. New signs and a viewing platform at the quarry were built while some old tramway wheels were salvaged for display and a piece of polished granite is included in the design.
It was initially hoped to reinstate the entire tramline from the quarry to the edge of the water and the barge landing site. But some of the old route was private land, so the Gippsland Lakes Discovery Trail, as it became known, ran 7 km downhill from the quarry site to the Log Crossing picnic area before diverting on Shire roads a further 13 km to Lakes Entrance.
The project was complex and not finished until 2003.
The trail along Mississippi Creek now links to a network of new mountain bike tracks through the bush.
Bushfire behaviour is influenced by many factors including temperature, relative humidity (RH), forest type, fuel quantity and fuel dryness, topography and even slope. But wind has a dominant effect on the Rate of Spread (ROS), as well as fire size, shape and direction.
Wind speed can be measured using a variety of anemometers.
This simple hand-held Venitimer was made by Elvometer in Sweeden, probably in the 1960s, and was designed for principally for mariners. Some models have a compass in the handle to measure wind direction.
The small inlet hole on the side is faced towards the wind and air pressure lifts small plastic disk inside. The upper tube is tapered so that as wind speed increases more air escapes and stronger winds are needed to raise the disk.
Wind speed in MPH is read from the side of the clear plastic tube. The waterproof container has instructions on use and conversion scales.
The Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) was originally invented by the legendary pioneer of Australian bushfire science, Alan Grant McArthur, during the 1950s and ‘60s.
After studying forest science at the University of Sydney in 1945, and later the Australian Forestry School in Canberra, Alan McArthur worked first in softwood plantations in the Tumut and Orange districts.
In 1951, he was appointed the first full-time fire control officer of the Snowy Mountains and began a lifelong quest to understand the behaviour and control of forest and grassland fires.
Then in 1953, Alan transferred to the Commonwealth Forestry and Timber Bureau in Canberra as a fire researcher. Five years later he was appointed Principal Research Officer in the newly created Division of Forest Research within the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
Alan was a very hands-on forester and fire researcher. To gather data, he deliberately lit over 450 experimental fires between 1956 and 1961 under a range of low to moderate weather conditions in the Kowen Forest and Bulls Head Creek area around Canberra. There were other test fires near Traralgon and the Wombat Forest near Daylesford.
For obvious reasons, he wasn’t able to light test fires under extreme weather conditions, so his subsequent fire danger equations needed to be extrapolated.
Much of his raw field data was collected by students from the Australian Forestry School and later the Australian National University where he lectured. Alan used his fit and hardy crew, armed with time stamped rocks, to mark the progress of the test fires and collect the data as well as map fire progression for his meter, a hugely useful improvement in fire prediction at the time.
Alan made thousands of detailed observations of things like wind speed, RH, temperature, cloud cover, rainfall, fuel moisture content, flame height, fire intensity, spotting distance, rate of spread, fuel quantity. He also made subjective assessments of fire suppression difficulty.
Alan published his landmark paper, “Controlled burning in eucalypt forests” in 1962. Leaflet No. 80, as it was known, proved a turning point for forest and fire managers across Australia.
More importantly, Alan was very practical forester and wanted his work to be useful to people in the field, so after several iterations he came up with the now familiar circular slide rule called the Forest Fire Danger Meter (FFDM). The Mk 4 version first appeared in operational use in 1967.
There is also a grasslands fire danger meter.
Two Forests Commission staff, Athol Hodgson and Rus Ritchie, built on McArthur’s pioneering work and by applying their own practical experience, developed a modified version in the late 1960s called the Control Burning Meter which was better suited to Victorian forest conditions.
Alan’s research work, in combination with new aerial ignition techniques developed in Western Australia and Victoria, led directly to a rapid escalation of the area of fuel reduction burning, which peaked in Victorian forests 1981 at 477,000 ha.
The FFDI meter uses measurements of dryness, based on rainfall and evaporation together with the Keetch-Bryram Drought Index to calculate a Drought Factor (DF) ranging from 1 to 10.
The Drought Factor is then combined with wind speed, temperature and relative humidity to calculate a FFDI in a range of 0 to 100.
By assessing fuel load (tonnes/ha) and slope, the fire behaviour characteristics such as Rate of Spread (ROS), flame heights and spotting distance can be estimated under a range of fire danger indices.
Most successful firefighting, and indeed fuel reduction burning, occurs when the FFDI is in the “Moderate” range between 5-12. The FFDI rises to “High” between 12-24 and “Very High” between 24 and 50. A day with an index exceeding 50 is considered “Extreme”. (see note below).
Alan used the conditions of the 1939 Black Friday fires as his example to set the upper limits of FFDI at 100.
However, the FFDI went “off the scale” on both Ash Wednesday in 1983 and Black Saturday in 2009. Under these extreme or catastrophic bushfire conditions, the weather rather than fuel load or arrangement, becomes the dominant factor influencing fire behaviour.
But for anyone who has been involved in bushfires they will know that the FFDI has its shortcomings.
The original system was only designed for use in forests and grasslands. But Australia has lots of different types of vegetation such as Mallee heath, woodlands and open savanna, and the FFDI system does not forecast those well.
The FFDI meter does not consider all the conditions which have an impact upon fire behaviour such as wind changes and atmospheric stability.
The model begins to break down at the extreme end of the scale and small changes to temperature, humidity and wind speed can have a huge influence on the fire danger index.
But no matter what the shortcomings of the FFDI meter, Alan’s scientific legacy is unquestionably huge and has served forest firefighters very well over the decades. New research will refine and develop even better models.
Alan’s seminal book “Bushfires in Australia” was published in 1978 with another forester Robert Henry (Harry) Luke and remains compulsory reading for every bush firefighter. Alan retired from the CSIRO in 1978 and died later that year.
Note: Each State once had their own fire danger ratings, but a new and consistent system was introduced across Australia in 2022. No Rating (< 12), Moderate – plan and prepare (12-23), High – ready to act (24-49), Extreme – take action now (50-99), Catastrophic – leave early (>= 100).
Alan McArthur. Source CSIROLighting a test fire near Canberra. Source CSIRO
There was a noticeable increase in burning across Australian forests after Alan MacArthur’s research work with the CSIRO and his publication of Leaflet No 80 in 1962. The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Meter (FFDM) first appeared in operational use in 1967 as the Mk 4. Photo: Jack Gillespie.
The FCV Fire Research Branch developed a control burning meter based on Alan McArthur’s models. Version 2 – 1970. Source: Ion Worrell.
My well-worn copy of bushfires in Australia by Luke and McArthur from 1978. Compulsory reading for ever firefighterForest Fire Danger Meter (Mk5). Photo: Peter McHughArea of prescribed burning in Victoria between 1921–2016. The solid line is the annual area burnt while the dashed line is the 10-year rolling average. The big increase came after leaflet no 80 and the development of aerial ignition techniques using fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. The maximum level of 477,000 was achieved in 1981.Source: Morgan, Tolhurst et al 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049158.2020.1739883
From the early 1960s, the Forests Commission had pre-season arrangements in place with local aeroclubs and pilots across regional Victoria.
Air observers from FCV districts routinely flew during the summer months in small, fixed-wing aircraft on fire spotting missions and to map fire boundaries.
The information was often needed quickly on the ground or in the control centre and these small chutes were used to drop messages and maps from the reconnaissance aircraft on a low pass above a cleared area like a football field.
About 3-foot long when fully extended, they had a small pouch secured with a press stud for the map or package. The chutes were made from tough canvas with a small, weighted sandbag at one end and a long yellow streamer tail on the other to help direct its fall and locating it on the ground.
Drop chutes were still in common use in the 1980s, but the increased availability of helicopters combined with improved digital data transfer made drop chutes redundant.
With the money raised from the sale of the FCV lapel pins last year the Forests Commission Retired Personnel Association (FCRPA) engaged Mark Jesser, a professional photographer, from Wodonga.
We recently had a two-day working bee at Beechworth with Leith McKenzie, Andrew Pook, Mark A Webster and myself pulling all the dusty items out of their display cases for the photographer to work his magic.
A total of some 380 museum quality images were taken of about 90 items.
We have created a site with “Victorian Collections” and begun to upload and describe each item so that information is searchable and freely accessible online. But it’s gunna take a while to get this step done.
The future of the museum at Beechworth is still under a cloud but at least this cataloguing project helps to preserve some of Victoria’s rich forest and bushfire heritage.
So, thanks to everyone who purchased the pins.
We hope to eventually get the Altona collection done too.
In 1836, the western boundary between colonies of NSW and South Australia, and what was later to become the border of Victoria, was decided as the 141 degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich.
Three years later in 1839, Charles Tyers transferred from the Royal Navy and was given the task to precisely mark the 141 meridian near the mouth of the Glenelg River at Nelson so that the SA border could be clearly identified on the ground.
But due to inadequate survey equipment he marked the spot too far to the west by two minutes of longitude, or about 2 miles and 4 chains.
For map geeks – one degree of longitude is further subdivided into 60 minutes, and 1 minute of longitude at the equator equals 1 nautical mile which is 1.15 times longer than a regular mile. And a ship sailing at 1 nautical mile per hour is said to be traveling at 1 knot.
Beginning on 28 April 1847, surveyors Henry Wade, and later Edward White, began marking the 279-mile border between Victoria and South Australia with blazed trees, mounds of earth and piles of stone beginning at Tyers survey mark on the coast and heading north. They had a remarkable and arduous journey and finally reached the Murray River on 7 December 1850.
But there were lingering doubts about the accuracy of border and another survey 1868 with better equipment confirmed it to be in the wrong location.
The surveying error is most apparent when pondering the odd kink in the junction of the three states (Vic, SA and NSW) near Mildura.
The South Australian Government wanted the border shifted back to its true position, but Victoria was having none of it.
The error resulted in more than 75 years of a protracted legal arguments between South Australia and Victoria over what was called the “Disputed Territory”.
The matter went to the Australian High Court in 1911 and finally to the Privy Council in London in 1914. South Australia lost the argument and forfeited more than 500 squares miles of land to Victoria.
If you look carefully at the plantation maps near the South Australian border at Rennick you can see evidence of the Disputed Territory and roads which run in a north-south direction along the 141 degree meridian. The Forests Commission began establishing pines on the other side of the disputed line in about 1940.
Main Image: “Surveyors” by colonial artist S T Gill (1865). National Gallery Victoria
Plantation boundaries run north-south between the 141 meridian and the disputed SA border. Source: Google maps
The evolution of Australia’s state boundariesThe border between Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, as marked on an 1883 map showing Victoria’s western border is further to the west than that of New South Wales. Source: WikipediaAt the Victorian – SA border near Nelson
William Christian arrived in Melbourne in 1850 and worked as a pattern maker in a foundry. But like many others he was soon drawn by the lure of the goldfields. After a few unsuccessful years of trying his luck, William ended up in Woodend in 1868 and started a couple of successful sawmills in the Wombat forests at East Trentham.
Timber harvesting for sawlogs had commenced in the Wombat forests in the 1850s to serve the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. At its peak output in 1878 some 138,000 cubic metres of sawn timber was produced from more than up to 190 mills using an extensive network of timber tramlines.
But the rampant scale of wasteful and unsupervised timber harvesting where only the best trees were taken, combined with poor regeneration, resulted in the Wombat forests being officially described in the fourth progress report of the Royal Commission in 1899 as a “ruined forest”.
These photos are of Christian’s Mill near the Campaspe River. It was a portable outdoor setup that could be moved between summer and winter operations so it could cut timber all year. Logs were pulled by horses, mostly downhill, on jinkers, from up to two miles away. Using 20 men the mill could cut about 9 cubic meters per day with the vertical framed saw.
William died in 1899 and the business was taken over by his two sons and it continued to operate until 1918 when it was sold.
Houghton, Norm (2013). Wombat Woodsmen. A sawmilling history of the Wombat forest.
Victorian bushfires in summer of 1943-44 burned over one million hectares, killed 51 people, injured 700, and destroyed over 650 buildings.
There had been deadly fires just days before Christmas in the northeast which had killed 10 firefighters from the Wangaratta fire brigade. More widespread fires across the State a month later killed 20 people and included blazes on the outskirts of Geelong and Melbourne at Beaumaris.
But the loss of a further 13 lives at Yallourn, 80 years ago today on 14 February 1944, together with the impact on the State’s electricity supplies when the critical brown coal fields caught alight, brought the summer season into sharp media and political focus.
The State Government hadn’t acted on Judge Leonard Stretton’s Royal Commission recommendations made five years earlier after the deadly 1939 Black Friday bushfires. The inertia was mainly due to the intervening war years and rival factions within rural and urban firefighting brigades in country Victoria.
The 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, but this time he was even more strident about improving bushfire coordination 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 CFA came into legal effect on 2 April 1945.
All the existing country brigades were invited to join the new organisation… most did… some reluctantly… but nobody seemed particularly happy with the new arrangements…
Main map of the 1943/44 bushfires was probably produced for the Stretton Royal Commission. Source: State Library of Victoria. http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/119987
1944 Royal Commission map of the Yallourn fire
The 175B Bucyrus Shovel on fire in Yallourn Open Cut, February 1944. Source: The Old Brown Coal Mine Museum.The memorial at the gates of the Hazelwood Cemetery commemorating the 13 people from Gippsland who lost their lives in the bushfires of February 1944. Photo: Peter McHugh
As they say… the days are long… and the years are short… but where did those 10 years go?
On Saturday 8 February 2014, I was acting as a mentor in a Level 3 Planning Team at the Traralgon Incident Control Centre (ICC). We were working on a small but complex bushfire in the Hearn’s Oak / McDonald’s Track area to the west of Morwell which had started the day earlier and was thought to have been deliberately lit.
There was serious concern about the Bureau of Meteorology’s weather forecast for Sunday of high temperatures and strong north winds, followed by a south west change around midday. The State Control Centre in Melbourne was requested to prepare a bushfire behaviour prediction map using the sophisticated Phoenix computer models.
The prediction map confirmed the planning team’s suspicions, that if the fire broke its containment lines it would spread to the east and impact Morwell as well as both the Hazelwood and Yallourn coalmines.
The possible fire scenarios, maps, warnings and advice were all given to the Police, SES, Latrobe Shire, coal mine representatives and others, at a briefing late on Saturday afternoon. This was the day before the fire broke out. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hazelwood coalmine owners (GDF Suez) fully understood the gravity of the map they were given and probably failed to adequately prepare for Sunday.
The rest of Saturday afternoon and evening were spent with Senior Sergeant Peter Fusinato from Victoria Police, Lance King from Latrobe Shire and the SES preparing a detailed evacuation plan for Morwell, just in case.
Public information meetings were held in the town and warning advice relayed to ABC radio.
The next day, on Sunday 9 February at around 1.15 pm, the fire Hearns Oak which had been contained overnight, but not fully blacked-out, broke out as feared under the influence of the strong south-westerly wind change and rapidly spread east towards Morwell.
About 30 minutes later, there were more smoke sightings south of Hazelwood on the Strzelecki Highway in the Driffield area. Arson was suspected and the Police were immediately notified.
Fire investigators discovered three kerosene-soaked toilet rolls which had been lit and chucked by the side of the road. It was almost as if someone had lined up the mine with the wind direction to maliciously cause the maximum damage. I understand that people were later arrested and charged.
The fires spread quickly and took hold in an unused part of the Hazelwood mine on upper levels of the coal batters. It also impacted the southern rehabilitation areas of Yallourn open cut.
It’s hard to be certain, but I believe it was the deliberately lit fires at Driffield which had the main impact on the Hazelwood mine rather than the fire originating from Hearns Oak. Not that it really matters now.
All effort was immediately thrown into a desperate and complex firefight. The priority was life and property in Morwell but, where possible, resources were sent to the mine to assist.
The Traralgon ICC was seriously understaffed. Normally for a large complex bushfire there would be a planning team of 8 to 10 people including a mapping officer, resources officer, air observers, weather specialists, fire behaviour analysts, intelligence officers etc., but everyone was already deployed to the East Gippsland fires.
The ICC worked frantically with the Police, CFA and SES to trigger the evacuation plan for the western edge of Morwell township we had jointly prearranged but there was no time for people to respond and move. Shortly before 4 pm, a State Emergency Warning (SEWS) was issued for Morwell to warn people they were in immediate danger.
The plan included the closure of the Princes Highway and main railway line. But the driver of the V/Line passenger train bound for Melbourne from Morwell mustn’t have got the message from his control centre and luckily just made it through to Moe before the tracks were engulfed in smoke and flames. Lots of wooden sleepers were burnt and it took weeks to reinstate the line.
High voltage power lines to Melbourne, substations, and the Hazelwood power station itself was also under threat. There were safety concerns about using helicopters to drop water on high voltage electrical equipment.
In addition to protecting Morwell, other priorities were the Maryvale Private Hospital and the Gippsland Water Factory. The fire destroyed conveyor belts and a large stack of pulpwood at the Maryvale paper mill.
By early evening, around 5.30 pm, the fire had grown to about 2800 Ha with extensive spotting at multiple locations.
Thankfully, nobody was killed or seriously injured that afternoon, but some houses, HVP plantations, farm fences and stock were lost while a large chicken farm was also threatened.
I’ve been involved in lots of major blazes over my forestry and firefighting career, but nothing like this.
The burning coal seams needed to be flooded with water and foam but the big water main which the SEC had installed years ago around the rim of the mine to run sprinklers over the coal batters and suppress the dust had been removed and sold for scrap by the new owners.
Also, the pumps in the bottom of the pit that could have been used to douse the blaze in the early stages didn’t operate because they were electric, and the power had been cut.
As the coal batters burned, they collapsed, and at one stage threatened some major mine buildings.
Specialist fire trucks with long booms that could spray huge quantities of compressed air foam were accessed from across Australia. But firefighters could only work down in the pit for about two hours because carbon monoxide would build up to dangerous levels in their blood. Crews had to be tested and rotated continually and a few ended up in the Traralgon hospital. Twenty firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation and there were complaints of severe health problems over the duration of the fire.
It was a dreadful place with the sulphurous smoke and dust, but the glow looked fantastic at night. I went down into the pit once for a look but didn’t stay long.
Remote control drones with cameras were used for aerial reconnaissance for the first time. The MFB had a new one and was able to fly through the acrid smoke and because it was fitted with an infra-red camera it could pick up any hot spots.
The fire lasted 45 days and was the largest and longest mine fire to occur in the Latrobe Valley. More than 7000 firefighters from Victoria, interstate agencies, the ADF and the mine owners were deployed.
But the main impact was the large amounts of acrid smoke and ash that settled on the adjacent townships of Morwell and Traralgon.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and the Health Department were slow to act about the toxic fumes and smoke. It took nearly three weeks for the residents of Morwell to be officially advised to evacuate their homes and some limited government support was belatedly made available.
Local people were demanding answers about why this had been allowed to happen as well as who was responsible for regulating the mine and paying for the capping and rehabilitation of the worked-out coalfaces.
Additional ICC teams were flown in from other parts of the State over the following few days and weeks and the Incident Control Centre at Traralgon was overrun as we gave endless briefings on what was going on.
Big wigs, the Brass, and countless hangers-on seemed to immediately descend from everywhere into the cramped office space at Traralgon. They included lots of senior government honchos from Melbourne; Police Commissioners; the SES; Sharon Gibson – Latrobe Shire Mayor, councillors, John Mitchell – CEO and council recovery staff; CFMEU and UFU representatives; Red Cross; Ambulance Victoria; Environment Victoria; Rosemary Lester – Chief Health Officer; Dept of Human Services (DHS); Kylie White – Earth Resources; John Merritt – EPA Regional Manager; Craig Lapsley – Fire Services Commissioner and all the Fire Chiefs including, Alan Goodwin – DEPI, Peter Rau ? – MFB and Steve Warrington – CFA.
There were also visits from the State Premier – Denis Napthine; the Deputy Premier – Peter Ryan; the Opposition Leader – Daniel Andrews; and all the local state and federal politicians with their advisors and media entourages in-tow wanting a briefing. I can’t remember if the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, came or not. It was manic and all a bit of a blur now.
Meanwhile there were still huge bushfires brewing in far East Gippsland. There were also major fires at Devon north near Yarram, in the Grampians, Wyperfeld, the Big Desert and Kilmore. It was hard to find people to fill key IMT roles and additional fire crews.
The fires in East Gippsland developed into a major campaign effort and burnt for over two months. They became so huge and could be seen from space.
To add to the stress levels, there was another departmental restructure underway with senior staff being targeted for redundancy. But that’s another story…
The Victorian Government held the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry from late February to September 2014. There was a further WorkSafe court case. The mining company lawyers tried to claim that they hadn’t been warned that the Hearns Oak fire might enter their coal pit. But I knew they had received a personal briefing and Phoenix fire prediction map the day before and lucky for me there was an email trail, and my logbook was up to date. All my material was subpoenaed, and I gave a witness statement to departmental lawyers and waited to be called.
Ironically, after all the inquiries and court cases were over and the government had shelled out nearly $100M to extinguish the fire the French company that owned Hazelwood finally closed it in March 2017.
Top Photo: The main media and political interest in 2014 were a bushfire north of Melbourne at Mickleham and the Hazelwood coalmine which burnt for 45 days and cost a staggering $100 million. But just look a bit further east…. the snowy river complex lasted for over two more months and grew to 165 800 ha or roughly the same size as Melbourne. NASA image – 10 February 2014 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/83117/city-sized-fire-in-australia
Smoke drift from the Coal mineBurnt area showing the spread of the Driffield and Hearns Oaks fires.This is the phoenix prediction map showing the possible spread if the fire at Hearn’s Oak broke its containment lines. I provided this map to the owners of the coal mine on Saturday. The day before.
It’s been 15 years since the catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires on 7 February 2009, with the loss of 173 lives, and which devastated townships such as Marysville, Kinglake, Narbethong, Flowerdale and Strathewen.
But just over a week before, on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 January, there were six deliberately lit blazes south of Morwell near the townships of Yinnar, Mirboo North and Boolarra. Police later charged a man with arson.
While three of these fires were quickly extinguished by the CFA, the other three at Ashfords Road, Creamery Road and Lyrebird Walk developed, and ultimately merged to become the Delburn Complex.
The incident was primarily run by the CFA, with Kevin Pettit as the Level 2 Incident Controller. Because of the plantations under threat, Kevin initially operated out of the Hancock Victorian Plantations (HVP) offices at Churchill, with the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) in support, both on the ground and in the air with a large fleet of fixed wing firebombers and helicopters operating out of the Latrobe Valley.
A Level 3 Incident Control Centre (ICC) was later established at Traralgon on Thursday 29 January as the fire complexity and size escalated with Mike Owen appointed the CFA Incident Controller.
When I arrived at work on Friday morning, I was immediately deployed to conduct a series of public meetings about the fires. I had wrangled large angry mobs previously during the 2006-07 alpine bushfires so was very familiar with the unique challenges. I grabbed some maps and other stuff and together with a CFA presenter from Warragul, we went to meetings at Boolarra, Mirboo North, Yinnar and Churchill.
Over 1000 people attended the community meetings but the most difficult was at Boolarra where about 300 residents were under direct threat and were very frightened.
During the meetings people were advised that given the weather conditions on Friday and the likely fire progression, leaving early may be their best option. At the time the CFA doctrine was to “stay and defend” rather than “leave early”.
Residents were also told that it was very unlikely that they would get either CFA or DSE trucks to protect their homes and there may not be time to issue a warning of the fire entering the township.
I remember speaking with the wife of a work colleague and friend after the Boolarra meeting. They lived on a hillside above the town on Piggery Road, and she asked me what she should do. I advised her to leave the house, particularly because she was on her own and her husband was on a CFA truck. Sadly, their home burned down later that night and I felt dreadful. I was troubled for a very long time and wondered if I had given her the right guidance. But given what happened a week later during Black Saturday at Churchill my solace was, they were both safe and alive.
A former Captain of the Boolarra CFA brigade attended the meeting and made some inflammatory and alarmist remarks. He also said he would ring the CFA siren as a community warning which was against CFA policy at the time.
The public meeting at Boolarra was filmed and a TV news story was aired weeks later when the Royal Commission hearings were being held. The journalist selectively used parts of the footage to create a misleading impression that residents had not been adequately advised or clearly warned of the approaching danger. DSE lawyers considered taking action because this was clearly false as the Royal Commission later acknowledged in its findings.
The main fire activity increased as predicted during Friday when the temperature reached 42 degrees with low humidity and moderate winds. The FFDI reached 52 (extreme). The fire area nearly tripled from 2,150 ha just before dawn, to approximately 5,750 ha close to midnight.
The final fire area was 6,350 ha with approximately 60% in HVP plantations, and 44 houses were lost. Importantly, no one died.
There were more public meetings over the weekend with swelling crowds. Local MP, Peter Ryan, accompanied me on Saturday.
It was also during the Delburn fires that the famous image of Sam the Koala, being given a drink of water by CFA firefighter Davide Tree, was taken by Mark Pardew from DSE. Sam became an international media star and was taken into care by Colleen Wood at Erica. There is a monument to Sam at Mirboo North.
The Delburn fires were contained by Tuesday 3 February but a large contingent of CFA, HVP and DSE crews remained on the ground and in the IMT, for blackout and patrol.
As it later turned out, crews and the IMT at Traralgon were well positioned to respond quickly when the Black Saturday bushfires started at Churchill on 7 February.
However, the story of the fires at Delburn were overshadowed and somewhat forgotten by these other more catastrophic events.
Satellite image of Australian bushfires from January 30, 2009. NASA image created by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
Victoria’s Forests & Bushfire Heritage 