Providing timber for housing and domestic use from the State’s native forests, together with expanding softwood plantations, to support Victoria’s rapidly expanding population had always been an important goal for the Forests Commission.

It had also been a very a clear directive from the State Government to meet Victoria’s timber needs and to expand the State’s rural prosperity.

While there was a local sawmilling industry from the 1850s, Victoria relied heavily on imported timber until about 1900.

There was also an imperative to restore some of the damage done to the State’s forests caused by the indiscriminate cutting during the gold rush, and the mad scramble for land settlement that followed in the late 1800s.

There were loud calls, particularly after shortages experienced during WW1, to increase timber production from the State’s native forests to reduce the dependence on imports.

The timber supply shock was no doubt a factor in the State Government creating the Forests Commission as an independent entity immediately after the war in 1918.

Experimental seasoning workshops and kilns had been established by the Department in 1911 to investigate the properties of local hardwood timbers and to develop a sawmilling industry.

The State Seasoning Works at Newport demonstrated the potential uses of Victorian hardwoods and this pioneering work done in partnership with the CSIRO bore fruit. By 1931 it was estimated that 80% of the flooring laid down in Melbourne was kiln-dried mountain ash cut from the State’s forests.

The research work at Newport and by Dr Herbert Eric Dadswell and his colleagues at the CSIRO from 1929 until 1964 the expanded the understanding and uses of native timbers.

Experimental softwood plantations had been established  at Frankston and Harcourt in 1909. The largest plot was some 2,500 acres at the McLeod Prison farm on French Island in 1917, but the major softwood expansion wasn’t until the early 1960s.

Victoria’s native forests continued to provide sawn timber, heavy construction timbers, railway sleepers, power and telephone poles, fencing materials, firewood and pulpwood for papermaking.

Timber for Homes.

The rate of house construction between 1920 and 1939 was relatively steady, except for the period of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Green scantling timber was used for wall and roof framing and sub-flooring. Dried and dressed hardwoods, particularly messmate and mountain ash, were used for internal flooring, door and window frames and architraves.

Softwood weatherboards were imported from Baltic States for external cladding, while old-growth Oregon was imported from North America for large structural timbers. Asbestos cement sheet was also used widely.

With the outbreak of WW2, the Commission’s efforts were directed towards salvaging the mountain forests burnt across the Central Highlands in 1939 and supporting the war effort.

Sawn timber production for domestic housing increased rapidly in the five years after the war, and then more than doubled by 1955, in the post-war housing boom.

From the mid-1950s the volume of sawn timber remained relatively stable, even though the number of new houses constructed each year increased steadily by an average of about 900 per year, from 20,700 in 1956, to 38,100 in 1976.

The increasing demand for housing during this period was coupled with a trend towards larger homes.

But while local green hardwood timber remained the main material for wall and roof framing, concrete sub-flooring and brick-veneer exterior cladding became increasingly popular which reduced the demand on native forests.

By the mid-1960s, sawmilling was recognised as one of Victoria’s largest rural industries which provided wide opportunities for decentralised employment.

Techniques for cutting and seasoning eucalypt timbers were well established while builders, architects and homeowners had come to appreciate the strength, versatility and beauty of Australian wood.

The Victorian Timber Promotion Council (TPC) was created by an amendment to the Forests Act in 1969. The TPC was supported by the Commission and sawmilling industry with a levy on all sawlogs. It strongly promoted the uses of local hardwood and softwood timbers and produced the popular Timber Framing and Stress Grading Manuals to support builders and architects.

There was a trend in the 1970s for particleboard flooring with carpet or cork covering instead of kiln-dried local hardwoods. 

Victoria’s softwood plantation estate (both private and Government) also expanded during this time, but local softwood timber supplies remained very limited until the late 1970s when harvesting from the significant areas of maturing plantations increased.

In the decade from 1974 to 1983, it is estimated an average of 39,500 houses per year were constructed using timber from Victoria’s State forests.

And while average house size was continued to increase the use of timber per unit of floor space decreased steadily over that period. For example, the average house size in Victoria in 1974 was 150 m2, but then increased to 170 m2 by 1983. Over the same period the volume of timber per square metre of floor space decreased from an average of 0.14 m3 in 1974, to 0.11 m3 in 1983.

Over the period that reliable figures were reported (1900 – 2022), the volume of sawlogs harvested from Victoria’s native forests was about 90 million cubic meters.  Production spiked during the 1939 salvage and then peaked in the early 1950s but then steadily declined.

And from 1932 to 1992, which coincided with the separation of the Victorian Plantation Corporation (VPC), the production of softwoods from the state-owned plantations was a further 9.5 million cubic meters and was continuing to grow.

There is no doubt that the Forests Commission contributed significantly to Victoria’s economic prosperity for more than six decades by ensuring there was a renewable and sustainable supply of timber from the States native forests and softwood plantations to build millions of family homes across Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Source: David Williams. Hardwood Timber for Victoria’s Houses. https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/activities1/producing/681-hardwood-production-and-houses.html

Galbraith (1943). Timber Resources of Victoria and Their Relation to Housing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FPjht6smoS8vxfGzcrupTQdQ9kdU9cTr/view

Sir Wilhelm Schlich noted in his 1922 summary of Forest Policy of the British Empire that while progress was being made Australia lacked many of the skills to undertake inventory needed to prepare proper working plans.

Responding to the shortage, the Chairman of the Forests Commission, A.V. Galbraith, made concerted efforts in 1926 and 1927 to recruit trained foresters from Norway (Bjarne Dahl, Bernhard Johannessen and Kristian Drangsholt) as well as from the United Kingdom (William Litster and Karl Ferguson from Scotland with Mathew Rowe from the Forest of Dean).

Kristian Drangsholt finished school in 1916 and then was employed in practical forestry in the southern part of Norway till the Spring of 1918. From 1921 he studied for three years at University towards a Master of Science as a Forest Engineer, this was followed by a Diploma Forest Engineering in Spring 1924.

He served six months in the Norwegian Kings Guard, followed by a year on a whaling expedition to the Antarctic. Norway is a country bordered by sea with a proud heritage of Vikings, ships and ship builders, and it seems that many young Norwegians went to sea at an early age.

On 5 February 1927, Kristian arrived with Bernhard Johannessen onboard the same ship into Australia. Bjarne Dahl arrived a year later in March 1928.

Together, the three Norwegians formed the nucleus of the FCV’s new Forest Assessment Branch to begin systematically  mapping and measuring Victoria’s vast forest estate.

Despite Kristian’s formal forestry qualifications and mastery of English, his initial posting was at Bright and Creswick as chainman earning a measly 14s 6d per day.

But Kristian and Bernhard were soon appointed as Forest Assessors in November 1928 at a higher salary of five pounds ten shillings per week, plus 3d per day camping allowance and a horse allowance of 40 pounds per year.

Their first major assessment projects were in 1928 with Drangsholt taking the Rubicon Valley and Johannessen the adjoining Royston Valley.

Both men employed a chainman and an axeman as assistants, and their camps consisted of bush or cattlemen’s huts (if there were any) or drafty tents.

Accidents were common in the harsh conditions and help was far away.

The assessment crews also lived off the land, hunting and fishing to supplement their meagre and repetitive rations.

The assessment teams conducted “base line surveys”, which were long transects of one-chain wide strips separated at five chain intervals. This equates to a 20% sample of the forest. Within each transect, plots were set out where trees were counted, measured and aged, and their condition and species noted.

The diameter and height of the standing trees was measured and an estimate made of the output of sawn timber.

Assessment crews often worked in trackless bush and produced some of Victoria’s first topographical maps of the State forest.

Maps were produced using survey tapes, Gunter’s Chain and prismatic compass. Steep slopes were surveyed using an Abney level and elevations at fifty feet intervals were taken with an Aneroid barometer.

Twenty thousand acres were surveyed and mapped in the Rubicon valley using this laborious manual technique. It had to wait until 1944 before the first aerial photographs taken by the RAAF became available.

After Rubicon, Kristian assessed forests at Powelltown, Mount Horsfall, Castlemaine, Maldon, Lal Lal, Brisbane Ranges, Brittania Creek, West Tanjil, Upper Thomson, Mount Donna Buang, Daylesford, Blakeville, Cobaw, Moondarra, Orbost, Nowa Nowa, Waygara, Tyldesley, and Tostaree.

Bjarne Dahl moved into Head Office in about 1930 and by the 1940s was appointed Chief Forest Assessor for the FCV. In early 1945, he established an Assessment School at Kalatha Creek near Toolangi. The school later moved to Kinglake West in 1947 to the site of the POW camp established during the war. Dahl eventually left the FCV in 1948 to establish plantations in Gippsland for APM forests Pty Ltd.

Bernhard Johannessen took a job with the Dutch Forest Service in Java in 1930 and was never seen again after the war.

With increasing the availability of rugged 4WD vehicles during the 1950s, which could operate on a rapidly expanding forest road network, assessment work progressively became more mobile. Portable radios like the RC-16B also became available after the war.

During the colder winter months, the assessors returned to Head Office to prepare maps and write up reports.

Like his fellow Norwegians, Kristian Drangsholt would have seen more of Victoria’s forests than most ever did. He was a man of exceptional strength and sense of purpose and preferred the bush to the office.

Kristian was undoubtedly one of the Forests Commission’s “larger-than-life” characters who spent most of his career in the bush as a forest assessor, but in 1957 he built a family home in the Dandenong Ranges and worked as a forester based at Kallista. He retired in 1964 and died in 1968.

Kristian’s fascinating story, “Man of the Forest”, was written by his son, David, in 2014.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13hzVbyfnD-ZzYLd83CKBZxOomU8M44MI/view

Lake Elizabeth stretches languidly for about a kilometre along the heavily forested valley of the East Barwon River, about seven kilometres east of the township of Forrest in the Otway Ranges.

It’s a popular attraction for campers, walkers, and canoeists, not least because you can spot platypus in the early morning and at twilight…. if you’re quiet and lucky.

Forrest was a thriving timber town from the early days of settlement, but especially after 1945 when timber was desperately needed to feed Melbourne’s post-war construction boom.

For some years the Forester-in-Charge of the District was Bill Meadows.

During a prolonged deluge on a long weekend in June 1952 Bill and his assistant Mark Stump were “playing endless games of monopoly”. Records show that on 17 and 18 June, the total rainfall at Tanybryn near the top of the Otway Ranges was 40 inches, which is over one metre of rain, more than enough to float Noah’s Ark.

Forest Overseer Jack Hoult was told by an East Barwon farmer that while the West Barwon was a raging flood, the East Barwon was just a trickle.

Something was up… so they drove the Land Rover cautiously up the Kaanglang Road, which had recently been completely rebuilt, to discover that the mountainside along with their new road had disappeared in a gigantic landslip, leaving the steeply pitching bedrock glistening in the light rain.

A huge 48-hectare slab of sandstone with approximately 6 million cubic metres of soggy earth had slid into the East Barwon River below damming its flow. The water in due course over-topped the loose earth wall causing more flooding downstream.

Being the man in charge, Bill took numerous calls from Melbourne newspapers who asked what the new lake was called. The headline news in 1952 was the ascension to the throne of new Queen Elizabeth, so Bill patriotically replied: “Lake Elizabeth” and the name stuck, although some of the locals grumbled because they wanted it called Lake Thompson after a local farmer.

Twelve months later on 5 August 1953 and following more heavy rains the top 26 metres of the dam breached, and another surge of water carried tonnes of gravel and boulders several kilometres downstream.

The residual lake now contains about one fifth of its original volume.

Lake Elizabeth is a site of National geomorphological significance. Another well-known example of a perched lake is Tali Karng in the Alpine National Park north of Heyfield which was formed some 1500 years ago.

https://www.victoriasforestryheritage.org.au/resources/article-list.html?view=article&id=145:meadows-bill&catid=36

The Forestry Heritage Museum at Beechworth, which was opened with much flourish and fanfare by John Haber Phillips AC, Chief Justice of Victoria, during the Beechworth 150th celebrations on 27 July 2003, closes forever today.

A merry band of volunteers from the Forests Commission Retired Personnel Association (FCRPA) will brave the chilly conditions this week to move everything out, and hand the keys back to the Shire.

The museum is currently in the old Gold Warden’s Office, which is one of Beechworth’s original buildings. This building, plus the Chinese Protector’s office next door, were occupied by the Forests Commission in 1920 and continually functioned as a District Office until about 1985.

We don’t have any visitor statistics but, anecdotally, there was a steady stream of foot traffic into the museum making a beeline from where the tourist buses stop and grey nomads park their ginormous Winnebagos towards the iconic Beechworth Bakery for a sticky bun and frothy mugachino.

The museum has always been free entry, but the donation box accumulated enough shekels each month to help keep the lights on and pay the bills like insurance.

Indigo Shire are the custodians of the buildings and in 2021 engaged Melbourne consultants to review the historic precinct around the town. Despite being long-term tenants in the museum building, the FCRPA were not advised or engaged in the process, and a report was lodged before the Council which proposed.

“The Chinese Protector’s Office and the Gold Warden’s Office will be changing exhibition spaces, for artistic activation, interpreting and exploring themes relevant to the Gold Story.”

The retired foresters maintained that the consultants had failed to recognise that forestry has been part of the fabric of Beechworth since the gold-mining era. Many plantations were planted to stabilise the diggings.

Timber was also essential for the development of the mining villages as well as the surrounding farmhouses, for underground mining, for industrial and domestic heating.

Forester H.D. Ingle was stationed in Beechworth in about 1891 and he was followed by M. Griffin in 1905. It was pointed out that the museum building had a longer association with local forestry, land management and bushfires than it ever did with gold.

But the Council made it clear to the retired foresters that their new grand design didn’t include a forestry museum.

To be fair, the Shire has been supportive over the decades opening and closing the building every day and keeping an eye on things.

But more importantly, the membership of the Association is aging and thinning with no new recruitment because our constitution requires members to have been employed by the FCV, which folded in 1984.

And small country museums everywhere are struggling to stay open.

The writing was on the wall…. there was no immediate pressure, but we chose to move out, rather than be booted out.

We also decided a while back to get-with-the-times and digitally photograph our material and make it all freely available online with Victorian Collections. Interestingly, the most popular item at Beechworth has been the Gunter’s Chain.

Some additional items will be photographed this week by Wodonga camera wizard, Mark Jesser.

The best of the artefacts from Beechworth will be merged with DEECA’s Altona collection, which is available to visit by appointment. Surplus and duplicate items are being donated to museums at Heyfield and Mansfield.

Hopefully very little ends up in the skip (but how many hard hats do you really need to keep).

Facing the reality, the retired foresters are also in the process of winding up our affairs to remain as a social club, but still with a significant online presence, until the lights get switched off.

A sad day for sure, but thanks to all those who have shown interest and support for the Beechworth forestry museum.

https://victoriancollections.net.au/organisations/forests-commission-retired-personnel-association-victoria-inc

https://victoriancollections.net.au/organisations/department-of-energy-environment-and-climate-action

Judge Stretton clearly identified the inseparable trinity of forests, soil and water.

The “Save the Forests” campaign was founded in January 1944 and rose from the ashes of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires.

It was broad-based and included representatives from over 50 government and philanthropic organisations, and boasted over 100,000 members.

The Forests Commission played a key role in the campaign which had noble goals of improving forests, protecting them from bushfire and growing trees to restore farmland.

Its activities included operating native plant nurseries, community tree planting, programs for schools, seed collection, farm inspections and advice as well as organising a number of high-profile events including “Forest Week” at the Melbourne Town Hall.

By 1951, the campaign became the Natural Resources Conservation League (NRCL).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DUH-7RX9ZccZtqY8cq0rrp4sOVKhofq_/view

The Forests Commission Retired Personnel Association (FCRPA) have been entrusted with a couple of very generous donations over the last few months.

These are the Chinese robes that belonged to Forests Commission fireguard and builder of Moscow Villa – Bill ah Chow.

Every organisation has a handful of colourful characters, and the Commission had its share, but Bill remains one of its enduring legends.

After Bill’s death in 1967, the robes were safely kept by Bill’s daughter, Rose, until she died in 1993. The robes then passed to Bill’s granddaughter, Janice, and were also highly prized. Janice wrote a book about Bill and Moscow Villa in 2019.

I have written several times about Bill on Facebook, Wikipedia and my forest history blog. I’m also often asked to give evening talks about Bill (there are a couple coming up).

I became friendly with the ah Chow family when I started to write forest history stories. Much of my information came from Janice and from retired foresters that were personal friends with Bill, including Athol Hodgson.

After much deliberation, the family felt the retired foresters were better positioned to keep Bill’s story alive and we are deeply honoured by the gesture.

Bill loved to tell embellished campfire stories and often claimed to be a descendant of Chinese Royalty, but his family believes the robes were more likely picked up from a second-hand shop in Little Bourke Street in the 1940s.

In 2018 I wrote to the Chinese Museum in Melbourne and they gave this advice.

Mr. Ah Chow is dressed in a way that imitates a Mandarin or official of the Qing Dynasty. His hat looks like a mandarin style hat, a Qing dynasty official’s headwear, although it’s quite unlikely that he was actually a Mandarin. The button atop the hat usually indicated the wearer’s rank. His robe fastens up to the neck with buttons, which is typical of Manchurian style men’s clothing of the Qing dynasty also. He is not wearing a rank badge, which denoted official status. This kind of garment was also normally worn with a separate collar, which Mr. Ah Chow is not wearing in any of these pictures.

The foresters association aim to get the items professionally photographed and added into the Victorian Collections database.

We will also seek some professional advice about how to properly store and protect these amazing and priceless items of clothing. DEECA’s Altona museum is not an ideal spot to keep them because its not air-conditioned.

Moscow Villa & Bill Ah Chow.

The Forests Commission Retired Personnel Association (FCRPA) have received a couple of very generous donations over the last few months.

One is the brass identification plate from the Washington Winch.

The winch sits deep in the forest east of Swifts Creek and is the last one of its particular type left in Australia.

It was made by the Washington Iron Works company in Seattle.

This unique winch was one of two machines imported in 1920 to operate in the Karri forests of WA.

Both machines were later purchased by the Forests Commission after the 1939 bushfires for salvage logging at Toorongo to drive elaborate “high lead” cable systems.

This particular machine was later sold to Jack Ezard from Swifts Creek in 1959 where it operated on its current site until about 1961. The fate of the second machine is unknown. It was possibly cannibalised for parts.

The Ezards were innovative sawmillers who introduced high lead logging into Victoria. They had owned and operated sawmills in the Warburton area from 1907, before shifting to Erica in Gippsland in 1932.

Bulldozers and powerful logging trucks eventually made steam and the Washington Winch redundant.

The plate was recovered from underneath the Washington Winch in about 1980. Permission was sought at the time from Ezards sawmills.

The heavy 21 cm diameter plaque with the markings 11 x 14 refers to the double drums and the serial number is assumed to be 3832.

It will be displayed at DEECA’s Altona Museum.

The winch is listed on the State Heritage Register.

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

Wilhelm Schlich was from the Prussian school of forest management in the 1890s. He worked extensively in India for the British and later became a professor at Cooper’s Hill forestry school near Surrey in England, where he influenced generations of foresters across the British colonies.

He advocated the use of working plans in his five-volume “Manual of Forestry” which were written between 1889 and 1896. The first two volumes covered silviculture while the others dealt with forest management, forest protection, and forest utilisation. They became standard and enduring texts for all forestry students.

The idea of working plans spread throughout the British Empire and were recommend by Ribbentrop in his report to the Victorian State Government in 1895. This was echoed in the Royal Commission and the then stipulated Forests Act (1918), which created the Forests Commission.

The founding Chairman of the Forests Commission, Owen Jones, had trained under Schlich in Germany and had also prepared a working plan. This no doubt this influenced the decision by State Cabinet to recruit him from England.

There was no set formula, but working plans covered a range of things including timber harvesting, silvicultural thinning and pruning of younger native forests, establishment of exotic softwood plantations, construction of tramways, roads and bridges to enable licensed sawmillers to access timber stands, the maintenance of fire breaks and the operation of patrols to control illegal timber cutting and prevent fires.

The Commission pursued the idea of mapping, assessment and working plans with some vigour but lacked the skills and resources to fully implement them.

Schlich pointed out in his summary of British Empire Forest Policy in 1922, that Australia lacked many of the skills to undertake inventory needed to prepare proper working plans.

This shortage was one of the main reasons why the new FCV Chairman, A.V. Galbraith, recruited trained foresters from Norway (Bjarne Dahl, Bernhard Johannessen and Kristian Drangsholt) as well as from the United Kingdom (William Litster and Karl Ferguson from Scotland with Mathew Rowe from the Forest of Dean) in the 1920s.

To cope with the growing workload the Commission also restructured in 1926, dividing the State into five Divisions each with a Chief Inspector and four inspectors, and a total of 51 Districts.

A Forest Engineering Branch was also added in 1926 in the Head Office to deal with an expanding works program.

The Commission always saw itself as the champion of forest reservation and conservation and constantly advocated for an increase in permanent reserves.

It also had a very clear intent to move forests management from the chaotic “cut and run” approach of the 1800s to a more orderly and sustainable one.

BTW – The Forest Management Planning process which began under the Timber Industry Strategy (TIS) in the late 1980s fell under Section 20(a) of the Forest Act (1958) which required the Department to produce working plans.

Handwritten working plan for the Woohlpooer State Forest prepared by R S Code, Inspector of Forests, in the late 1930s.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yZ66WgjWQEhC1t9bmYPd130ITjcndbrj/view]

There are some important parallels between the efforts of early foresters in North America to protect and conserve their forests from exploitation and clearing, and the experiences here in Victoria. There are also some striking differences.

The US Forest Service began in 1905 around the same time as the Victorian State Forest Department and the relationships have always been strong. Policies were also forged by catastrophic bushfires… theirs in 1910 and ours in 1939.

The organisations also held similar views about the protection and wise use of forests.

America’s first professional forester, Gifford Pinchot, came from a wealthy and politically well-connected timber family.

He was largely responsible for the national awakening of land management and conservation. Importantly, he enjoyed the strong support of the US President Theodore Roosevelt who set aside vast tracts of national forest.

Pinchot said –

“conservation is the foresighted utilisation, preservation and/or renewal of forest, waters, lands and minerals”.

And…

“where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time”.

Pinchot thought of the greatest good in terms of the balance of multiple uses, including land, wilderness, forage, wildlife, timber, water and outdoor recreation.

Pinchot’s views were similar, but differed, from another great American forest conservationist, John Muir. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park. Muir also co-founded The Sierra Club.

Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing the nation’s natural resources for long-term sustainable commercial use without destroying the viability of the forests.

Muir acknowledged the need for timber and the forests to provide it, but valued nature and wilderness for its intrinsic and spiritual qualities.

From the mid-1960s, with increasing public criticism, environmental activism and legal challenges to traditional uses such as timber production, the US Forest Service found it more difficult to determine the greatest good.

Meanwhile is Australia, the same principles of balance and multiple use, which had been originally described in Wilhelm Schlich’s “Manual of Forestry” in 1898, were strongly advocated as the core policies of the Forests Commission.

This 2006 documentary was made to celebrate the centenary of US Forest Service. A similar film was suggested a while ago to tell the story of Victoria’s forest heritage  but stumbled at the barrier.

http://forestryvideos.net/videos/greatestgood/

Andraes Stihl was a Swiss-born engineer and is often said to be the “father of chainsaws”.

After serving during WW1, he studied mechanical engineering in Eisenach and later founded the Andreas Stihl Company.

Then in 1926, Stihl patented the “Cutoff Chainsaw for Electric Power” which was the world’s first electric chainsaw. But it weighed a hefty 64 kilograms with its one-inch gauge chain and handles at either end. Due to its bulk, it required two people to operate.

In 1928, Stihl’s former business partner, Emil Lerp, built and patented the first petrol chainsaw, known as the Dolmar.

A year later, in 1929, Andreas introduced his own petrol version, a two-man saw called the “Baumfällmaschine Type A”.  Producing 6 horsepower and weighing 46 kilograms, the saw was marketed as a “portable tree-felling machine”.

The Sthil company continued to revolutionise and grow and, in 1931, became the first European company to export chainsaws to both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Following the Second World War, lighter materials, metal alloys and improved engine designs revolutionised chainsaws together with the logging and timber industry.  The first one-man chainsaw was produced in 1950 but was still heavy.

The Stihl Contra was launched in 1959 and set the design standard for modern chainsaws. The gearless one-man chainsaw produced 6Hp and weighed only 12 kg. It also featured a diaphragm carburettor capable of working in any position which offered flexibility without having to manually change settings.

Many other companies now manufacture chainsaws, but Stihl remains one of the world’s biggest.

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

The forests of far East Gippsland are different.

The cabbage-tree palm (Livistona australis) grows along the remote Cabbage Tree Creek, 30 kilometres east of Orbost.  The palm is regularly found in NSW and Queensland, but only at this isolated spot in Victoria.

Famous explorer, A. W. Howitt wrote that heart of the Cabbage-tree was eaten by the Gunai/Kurnai people. Leaves were used for shelter and fibres for string, rope and fishing lines.

Early settlers also ate the Cabbage-tree palm and used the fronds as roofing and for brooms.

A cottage industry developed weaving the fronds into cabbage-tree hats.

Bundles of the palm leaves were gathered and carried home to be boiled, dried and finally bleached. Women and children spent their spare time plaiting hats for the family.

Orders were soon received from all over the country. A well-made cabbage-tree hat could fetch as much as twenty pounds. They proved very popular with Australian bushmen, gentleman squatters and young sportsmen.

Source: A Thornton, Walkabout Magazine. (1 July 1945). Vol. 11 No. 9. Page 16.

https://nla.gov.au:443/nla.obj-735293120

The magnificent River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) has the widest natural distribution of any of the Australian eucalypts.

Specimens have also been planted across the globe, including Sicily where I have just returned from.

It seems that River Red Gum was widely planted by Italian authorities after the war for timber and to stabilise soils, and some locals now consider them an invasive weed.

But more interestingly, its botanical name can be traced back to an ancient religious hermitage in the mountains near Naples which was constructed in 1585 by the Camaldolese congregation of Monte Corona.

In 1816, the distinguished Italian gardener, and Director of the botanical garden of Naples, Federigo Dehnhardt, was engaged to develop a private garden for a local nobleman, Count Francesco Ricciardi Camaldoli. The Count had been gifted some of the original lands of the Camaldoli Hermitage by the new Bourbon Government.

The garden was known as L’Hortus Camaldulensis di Napoli.

Dehnhardt propagated some River Red Gums in 1818 with seed that had been collected and sent over by Allan Cunningham, the famous NSW government botanist.

The trees grew so well that Dehnhardt described and named the species, Eucalyptus camaldulensis after the hermitage where the trees had been planted. His description appeared in the 1832 edition of a catalogue which recorded the names of all the species growing in the gardens, but his book was largely unknown to the botanical community. His specimens are housed in the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

Dehnhardt’s work was overlooked, and the River Red Gum was initially named Eucalyptus rostrata by the NSW botanist, Diederich von Schlecterindahl in 1847.

But Schlercterindahl’s name was declared invalid because it had already been given to the Swamp Mahogany in 1797 by a Spanish botanist.

In 1853, the Victorian government botanist, Ferdinand Von Mueller renamed the River Red Gum Eucalyptus longirostratis ( after the ancient Greek word for the long point, or beak on the cap that covers the developing flower)

But finally in 1934, notable Australian botanist William Blakely recognised Denhardt’s original work and the name Eucalyptus camaldulensis for River Red Gum was accepted.

In 1922, the River Red Gums planted by Frederick Dehnhardt were sadly cut down and the Camaldoli gardens were abandoned. The garden is now completely incorporated into urban expansion near Naples.

https://www.recreatingthecountry.com.au/river-red-gums-and-the-tuscan-monks.html

With the generous support of the Dahl Trust I have been busy over the last few months writing a new eBook titled “The Working Forests”.

The project about Victoria’s rich forest and bushfire heritage is due to be finished by the end of the year.

I had to break it up into two volumes because of problems with MS Word and instability of big files.

Attached is a link to a draft of Volume 1.

It contains about 200 short stories spread over nearly 600 pages with lots of pictures, maps and white space. It takes up about 140 MB in size.

Volume 1 roughly covers the chaotic period from colonisation in 1803, the 1850s gold rush, the trashing of the forests leading to the Royal Commission in 1897, the formation of a State Forests Department in 1907, through to the 1939 bushfires and the war years in the 1940s.

It also includes a big section on tall and remarkable trees which hopefully dispels some of the myths.

Volume 2 is in advanced draft and is about the same size.

1. It will start with the post war reconstruction and A. V. Galbraith’s “Grand Design”.
2. Building an effective fire fighting agency and major bushfires will be in there
3. Post war forestry and staff training to build a professional organisation.
4. Plantations, reforestation and silviculture.
5. It will tackle the rise of environmental activism in the 1970s.
6. Formation of CFL and the Timber Industry Strategy was a major turning point.
7. Changing community and political attitudes leading to the demise of the timber industry in 2024 will be tricky to write (but I have a few insiders to help).
8. The wide range of uses and values of State forest will also be covered.
9. And the great outdoors.
10. I have a long list of notable people too

I’m interested in your thoughts –

1. Is anything missing ?
2. Are there any major errors or bloopers ?
3. Does it look and feel right ?
4. It doesn’t have a comprehensive index because in electronic format it’s easy to skim, search and scroll. Is this a problem?
5. I have cited my main references and used lots of links but have stuck to my normal conversational (e.g. non-public service speak) style of writing. There will be a list of “further reading” at the end
6. It also hasn’t been proofread so please don’t focus on typos and wordsmithing at this stage.
7. I have linked to the main stories on the FCRPA website and tried to minimise duplication. The long term stability of these links is a concern.
8. It will be far too expensive to print. It was always planned to be a free eBook that could be safely stored in the national library to be downloaded and shared online.

I’m going off-line for a month and won’t be back till early June. I’m happy to take comments by email, but I might not be too quick in responding.

theworkingforests@gmail.com

Thanks once again for your support and encouragement.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HsH7WzEQBpwhk0GKnVWzIKn6ZAJHpC-m/view?usp=sharing

Or

https://1drv.ms/b/c/58c25200497bbbca/Efq5dotbk1FEq5np9ybPUEgBIdrJ9p9_19EOBuNZ9I1PRg

Driven by a deep philanthropic desire to provide employment for some of the more seriously maimed returned soldiers, several prominent Melbourne citizens, together with the support of Department of Repatriation, established the Tobacco Pipe Manufacturing company in Leicester Street Carlton in 1918.

The factory needed to not only invent, but also build its own machinery, and even had its own wood testing laboratory, while the Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry was engaged to investigate the suitability of various Australian timbers because little was known at the time.

Timber was selected for its low flammability qualities.

The ideal wood for making pipes needed to be even grained, dense and heavy and with long and firm structural fibres that could take a highly polished finish.

Some species contained essential oils and tannins that tainted the pipe smoke which ruled them out.

The famous wood technologist Richard Thomas Baker in his important work published in 1919, “The Hardwoods of Australia and their Economics”, refers to the combustibility and suitability of certain pipe woods.

Southern Mahogany (Eucalyptus botryoides) from Gippsland proved most popular, while other species included Swamp Mahogany (E. robusta) and Jarrah (E. marginata). Somewhat surprisingly, River Red Gum, then known as E. rostrata was rejected.

Logs were first broken down at the circular saw bench, and after passing through numerous cutting, docking, and shaping machines, pipes were finished off by hand.

Photos: State Library of Victoria (Pipe Factory)

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-7270009

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25317603

Pteridomania was the 19th century European craze for ferns and an obsession for collecting the rare and beautiful, just as Tulipomania had been two centuries before.

“Fern Madness” was coined by Charles Kingsley in his work Glaucus, or, The Wonders of the Shore in 1859. It was in full swing in Britain from 1850 to 1890 and spread to the United States and the Colonies.

People from all classes ventured into the bush to collect specimens – many of which were carefully pressed and kept in scrapbooks. Designer furniture and costumes with ferny motifs became enormously popular.

Collections of living ferns were often kept in specially built glasshouse ferneries or in sealed “Wardian Cases” at the homes of the well-to-do and middle-class.

Fern fronds were so popular in Victorian society, they sprouted beyond the garden into the realms of literature, religion, decorative arts, music, architecture, funerary sculpture and psychiatric care.

In no small measure, Pteridomania accounted for the enormous popularity among day trippers to the Dandenong Ranges, also made famous by painting by colonial artist Eugene von Guerard in 1857.

The problem was that many sought to take a little bit of the magic home, and the widespread plunder of the forests began.

So popular was a bit of fern napping for the home garden or pinching some fronds from the bush for the scrap book, that in 1869 one of Victoria’s earliest environmental regulations was introduced.

However, an attempt to prosecute a “fern thief” under a provision of the Lands Act (1869) ultimately failed on appeal in the Supreme Court in 1882 on the question of whether or not a tree fern was a “tree”. The full court ruled it wasn’t.

The collapse of the case, in part, helped the excision of 556 acres of the existing Dandenong Ranges Timber Reserve in 1882, which eventually became the Ferntree Gully National Park.

Australian tree ferns remain popular in home gardens both here and Europe. They can withstand dry conditions as well as heavy snow falls. They were exported in large numbers from Victorian and Tasmanian State forests as well as private land throughout 1970s to the 1990s.

Tree ferns are protected under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11535631

Source: State Library of Victoria and Mt Dandenong & District Historical Society

The famous Vienna Mozart Boys Choir found themselves stranded in Australia on the final leg of their global tour.

Australia declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, the day after their final concert in Perth Town Hall, so the choristers suddenly found themselves no longer celebrities but, in effect, Australia’s youngest aliens.

On the invitation of the Archbishop for Melbourne Daniel Mannix, the boys, ranging in age from 8 to 14, came with their musical director Dr Georg Gruber and their teacher Dr Otto Sternberg.

Gruber and Sternberg were later accused of being Nazi sympathisers and interned for the duration of the war, while the boys formed the nucleus of the St Patrick’s Cathedral Choir.

Mannix arranged for each of the choir boys to be billeted to foster homes in the inner city and schooled at East Melbourne.

When the war ended most of the boys elected to stay rather than return to their war-torn homeland.

One of the pressing requirements placed on the Forests Commission during World War Two was to organise emergency supplies of firewood for heating and cooking because of shortages of coal, briquettes, electricity and gas.

Employing Prisoners of War was one part of the solution

The Forests Commission had first occupied a 14-acre site at Graytown, east of Heathcote in 1919, firstly as a worker’s camp, and then later as a sustenance camp during the 1930s Depression.

The site was acquired by Department of External Affairs and the Army in 1943 and converted into No. 6 Labour Detachment,  also known as Camp #6, to house Prisoners of War to cut firewood for Melbourne.

The Graytown camp was surrounded by a double row of barbed wire fences about 6 feet high, with guard towers on each corner. The men were housed in tents with wooden floors. It had barracks, cookhouse, dining room and ablution block for communal use. There was a large sports field and a priest from Murchison visited every two weeks to hold  Mass.  Some men were allowed to visit  a nearby church.

Camp #6 was first occupied on 30 March 1943 by 253 Italian prisoners captured in North Africa, plus a handful of Finnish merchant seamen who arrived on 21 July 1943.

Sailors were captured from the German raider Kormoran, which sunk off the Western Australian coast in November 1941 after a fierce battle with HMAS Sydney where both vessels sank.

The Germans were first housed at Harvey Camp WA, then Murchison Camp. On 4 September 1943, the crew of the Kormoran moved into Graytown to replace the Italians and Finns.

The Italian POWs had set a record for best day’s cutting of 110 tons of 12-inch blocks, but the German POWs raised the bar to 120 tons – using equal numbers of men and four saw benches.

It’s reported that the Germans at the Graytown camp initially enjoyed the outdoor work but became progressively dispirited as the war dragged-on, and their weekly productivity dropped dramatically.

To help improve morale an orchestra was formed by the POWs who also waited on tables rather than cutting timber.

Meanwhile, the German navy officers were housed separately at the nearby Dhurringile mansion. Tensions boiled over leading to a breakout in January 1945 when 20 prisoners tunnelled under the barbed wire. They were all later found.

All the German prisoners left Graytown on the 14 November 1946 and were repatriated back home to Europe when they eventually sailed from Melbourne on-board the Orontes in January 1947.

Like many other FCV camps, Graytown was used after war to house immigrants from the Baltic states.

Many buildings were still there until the late 1980s, but now only concrete footings and segments of barbed wire fence can be found.

Photos: AWM

http://livinginballan.blogspot.com/2014/01/graytown-and-pow-camp.html

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/206871122

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22403646

One of the men at V12 Camp No.2 was Karl Muffler.

He was born in Germany and as a teenager chose to pursue a career as a pastry cook.

Karl migrated to Australia in 1930 and worked in Melbourne at Ikinger’s cake shop in Brunswick. He then established his own business, the Embassy, which operated in Malvern until the late 1930s. He married Hilde Mayer in 1939.

But on 4 September 1939, Karl was detained as an enemy alien along with hundreds of other German residents.

Muffler and his father-in-law Adolf Mayer were among the very first Germans to be detained, being arrested the morning after war was declared largely because of their membership of the Deutsche Arbeitfront (German Labour Front) of which Mayer was president.

The group built a club house at Belgrave, occupied from 1934 to 1939, and while few in number, its members were considered to be Nazi sympathisers and had already come to the attention of the authorities.

Belgrave residents have been taking increasing notice recently of German gatherings. Occasionally young German men and women are heard singing Nazi anthems on the roads, and tall, blond Germanic types are seen in the streets or driving through in motorcars. The club building is well-equipped for guests, and has a wireless aerial, a concrete cellar, wide verandahs and other amenities. The swastika flag sometimes floats over the building.” – Sun-News Pictorial, 24.4.1938

When the activities of this Nazi club were raised in Federal Parliament, Prime Minister Joe Lyons dismissed it saying

“if we are concerned at the existence of a Nazi club in Australia we should also be concerned at the existence of the many Communist clubs”. – Argus 29.4.1938

The clubhouse and its fittings were stripped over the following fortnight.

Karl was interned at the Tatura Camp in northern Victoria for the next five years. He kept himself occupied decorating cakes and learning woodcarving and drawing.

Hilda was not interned but was issued with a travel permit with severe restrictions that kept her within 15 miles of the GPO.

On the 20 June 1944, Karl was released from internment but directed to work for the Civil Alien Corp (CAC). He moved to Camp No2 in the Mt Disappointment State forest as an enemy alien.  He was released in 1945.

Muffler was naturalised in 1947 and remained in Australia until his death in 1996.

The Immigration Museum featured Karl’s story:

https://museumsvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/resources/immigrant-stories/karl-muffler