Stories From Tasmania's Southern Forests

and it was just a massive forest you'd be working there for years on virtually on the one landing i remember the millet at the mouth of the catamaran river that was a huge mill we each had our own ex you didn't pick up anyone else's axe and use it i've long had an interest in the soil milling industry i grew up next to a forest in western victoria i've produced the dvd stringy back i've done the book view and pine story and a couple of dvds on the human finest and i've always been interested in the southern forest south of hobart what a spectacular forest that was anyway i've done a couple of interviews in the early 2000s and i've woven those into this little bit of a story i hope you enjoy it i first become aware of the sheltered waterways of the dontre castro channel when i first came down in 1972 closed season for craze in victoria three mates and i brought the fishing boat down by way of port davey called into davey i'd seen it on a big country program on denny king i couldn't wait to get in there see what this was all about met denny king gave us a cup of tea laid alongside his yacht up in melaleuca inlet came around to new harbour and onto research bay beautiful place forests of the water's edge i didn't know a lot of the history then saw bits of ruins of the old coal mines and things james craig was still there on the mud up in the pigsties in the north end of research i had no idea the history of the place then the amount of sawmills and hustle and bustle that had gone on years before i would have loved to have been there back 50 years earlier been a hive of industry the timber was harvested from the 18 from the early 1800s 1850s 1860s and 70s sawmills became established and there's a wonderful history of hardwood logging in that area in the very early days a lot of timber was split for all manner of uses from pilings shingles and rails to even weatherboards on houses the free splitting of the timber is amazing and that's brought me back to the size the age-old method of cutting timber of course was in a saw bit one bloke up top one bloke down below wouldn't be good to be him getting all the sawdust a slow and laborious job and of course there was ship building in even in the early days down the channel because the timber was so readily at hand even if it did have to be pit sawn laboriously first sawmills became established in the 1850s 60s 70s and subsequently hundreds of families earned their living from the forest either by cutting timber milling timber freighting timber the virgin forests were just magnificent they reckoned them days if you got 50 to 60 trees loggable timber to the acre it was a good good forest studies show that a great fire went through the area some 300 years before european settlement decimated the hardwood forest but laid the seed bed for a new forest and that's what the europeans saw when they came there in the early 1800s i spoke to john casey back in the early 2000s on another project about the catchers trading out of hobart but we also touched on the timber industry at that stage and doing the same project i interviewed george heather as a boy his father had saw at moss glen and cockle creek and he grew up in the timber industry and we talked about it he told me a lot about it and i haven't used that interview until now apart from heather's two mills there was other mills in the research bay area there was a la prina mill right up the top end and there was a catamaran mill at the mouth of the catamaran river and i think there might have been one or two others but of course i didn't know that at the time when i first went into research the only ruins we found although there was ruins at the mouth of the catamaran river remember and up the catamaran river we found the ruins of the alcohol mines bits of machinery and bits and pieces scattered through the bush john casey worked at the el ramanir mill just south of dover which was one of the first sawmills in the area established about 1867 an amazing story steam mill was in operation right after we burned down in about 1973 still still run off steam i think it was a lot cheaper to run by steve it got rid of your waste wood got rid of most of our soldiers because it was all burnt in the in the furnace and uh well all the cost was the employment of one man i saw the ruins of it there in in the late 70s after it had been burnt down i walked through the ruins and saw the remains of the old gangsaws and bits and pieces and would have loved to have seen it when it was operating water was by far the most economical means of transport for over a hundred years little trading catchers were employed in the trade burn cuthbertson was deckhand for his father in the wee rudder back in the late 1930s the most unusual the places where they set up shop sort of thing i remember the millet uh at the mouth of the catamaran river there was a huge mill the old boiler and engine still sitting there and we carted timber from cockle creek the old timber uh the mill engine and the boiler still sitting there and the one up at laprina we used to cart timber from there okay mentioning laprina reminds me they had big actual punts down there square they were virtually for ships that couldn't get up the shallow river to laprina and the bigger ships going to the mainland or big overseas ships they'd anchor and then they'd tow tow these pond these punts down later with timber then and then lay them onto the um the ships huge lengths of timber too long to go through the sawmill were squared by hand with the broad axe as can be seen in these old photos these were exported as far away as cape town and london for the use in docks and piers and wherever they needed great lengths of timber the timber was so long that it couldn't be loaded through the hatches of the ships they had to be fed in through ports and the bowel lengthways ideally a mill should be situated so the timber went through the mill aided with gravity which wasn't hard to do when a mill was situated by the water as can be seen in clinton's garden island mill here with the logs coming in on the right off the tramway through the mill and skidded down to the wharf there on the left while some of the mills remained on the same site for long periods others moved on when the timber was cut out in the late 1930s smith and heather's mill was moved from moss glen to cockle creek by trading catchers or what the old locals termed barges the term barge was a carryover from the sailing barges of old england five the trading catchers also brought in all the supplies for the hamlets and the soil mills in the early days of chess and had the company store there they supplied all the groceries and it was deducted out of your pay matter of fact i got a docket book in there to show you quite a a big thing when the barge arrived you'd see it the sails coming round the point there and everyone was ready then for when the unloading started to cut the things to their various places the the chaff used to have to go to the stables and um even when we live away from ramune and just from murray here comes the queen and they'd always say here comes the queen they'd already have the groceries are bored for the store petrol and that was a million oil and the groceries was a company store they would always come on the barge on a slightly different subject but in the same area the cartridge of firewood was one of the other trades of the little catchers and this story involves two of my old friends burn cuthbertson and dudes pike burn was working for his father in the little wee rutter at the time alternating between timber and wood if that makes any sense timber was timber and wood was firewood which is a pretty rough and dirty and laborious way to make a living not much of a job the lowest of the trades for the al catchment it was a time when the catchers were running out of jobs competing against motor trucks it was all downhill interesting old photo timber stacked in the foreground there on the wharf a couple of catches i don't know what they are a steamer there in the middle of the picture and over on the far side there towards the right of the picture there's gorange's woodyard goran just bought a lot of wood off the catches and sold it around hobart and there's a little old t-model 4 truck there a forerunner of the trucks that were going to put the barges out of business we used to cut firewood from partridge island up to the jamb processing factories that humanville and they the only means of transport they had on board on the island was an old bull and it was a scared stiff of water and they they used to have to put a bag over his head but to uh to put to pull the sledge right down to the the jetty it was on partridge island and the sledge was unique in as much as it was a fork out of a tree and they used to hook him onto the trunk part of it and they had the fork with boards over the top it nailed on and that's where they used to stack the timber on that with pegs each side but this poor bullet just to just stand there and [Music] me as a kid it used to give me quite a joke a laugh and there was a family on there named the pike family first went to patton jones their main aim was to clear the timber to make more good farmland we had burned cathers and feed up the cart all their wood for us and we spit it all up and uh got several good loads and then we had the big load that he was coming to get we went up to get the horse and for our horse that died so we had to think of something else from john thought oh well i could use they'll boil his pity time so mum said oh you'll never get to get him down on the wall so he said oh we'll put a bag behind his eyes and tie a bag there anymore harnessing up to the dredge to this legends there he goes and tried it out nearly he worked very well and paul bernie when he come in and saw us bringing this load of wood down on the sleds without with a bull counter he didn't know what the mag was i think he thought we'd lost the plot anyway back to the sawmills in the history it was a common practice for travelling photographers to take photos of their sawmills and workers making a living by selling the prince it was by this means we have a wonderful pictorial record of the mills in their operation because really it was a spectacular operation a large machinery large timber large everything and characters to go with it the best book on the subject and no doubt the bible on the subject is scott clenan's book engaging the giants which has been extensively researched and beautifully presented a credit to all concerned another book on the subject is smithy sawmiller and ship owner the story of the chesterman family by bob chesterman both scott and bob have kindly allowed me to use photos out of their books for this little video which has been a big help testaments like the clinics at a number of mills and one of them was the old ramanir mill mentioned earlier on the esperance river just south of dover it was a big steam mill which stood on the one site for 103 years for much of that time owned by the chestermans they also owned a couple of catches or barges took out their own timber including the famous may coin john casey's father was manager of the ramener mill for some years as cutting progressed the timber had to be sourced from further back bush tram lines were built into the new stands and logs hauled out by horses or steam locos and winches in the late 1940s john casey worked for a time on tramway maintenance when i first started it was 44 hours a week and i had a few years in the mill which i didn't get much on and dad wanted me to stop there because everything was too cold in the bush but i went to in the finish i went to the bush with an art working with an old chap repairing the line and we called them scotties which i think is they call them fettlers the day and we was repairing the tram line and you know carrying the gear we'd drop us off as a mourn and we had nine mile of tram line to look out and we'd remember repair one place and walk to the next place and carry all the gear on our back it was raining you was wet all right no there's no such thing as wet and dry them days funny man to work with but a lot of stories about pearl george steven i don't think i'll go through and wouldn't be interested in him but he should have been he's the one that should have been on tape the amount of labor and expense invested in building a tram line back into the back country before a log was hauled out and timber sold is amazing bridges were a major part of the infrastructure fortunately the material was close at hand the main logs for this bridge spanning an unknown creek was said to be a hundred feet long and there was trestle bridges around bends over creeks over gullies look at the debris here supporting this bridge looks like they've made up a trestle or a supporting uh affair from various logs built it all up to support the middle of the bridge this is a bridge across the commandy river near jefferson said to be 160 metres long or over 400 feet think of the timber that went into that and the labor fortunately no bridges were required for the heather's mill at cockle creek though they did have to build two mile of tramway which took them nine months with limited labor most of the men having gone to the war two one okay but um oh um okay so my brother and i used to put the shoes in and they were niches about that wide and about that deep chopped into the side of the tree and then you put a we called it a shoe and you put some two on each side and you made a platform and that's what you stood on we used to peel the bark off the side of the the tree and lay it on so we could stand on it an axe i don't know you have to have a handle to suit individual people and if you break your handle in your axe you go to the shop and you pick out an a handle to suit you it might have to be shortened it might they're all individuals they're like people you and hickory handles was always the best that's what we chose and we each had our own ex you didn't pick up anyone else's ex and use it because you were responsible for your own ex and your ex was for you and it was your personal thing so and when the lot of a tree hit the ground you sat down at a smoke yeah then there was a tree was measured up uh anything from uh with my memory server it was a 14 foot long shortest log up to 44 46 or you know whatever they wanted then it set in and cut him up and you set into the the log of a cross cut and wouldn't stop he went right through a smoke i'll get another cigarette and that into it again but then the what they call the head faller he was paid a little bit more he recorded all the book work on the on the log then marked it on the stump of an indelible pencil that a pinky purpley colour so when the forestry come around and checked them out every month and crowned it so you couldn't get any for nothing at the outer end of the tramways there was a log landing where a powered winch pulled logs to the landing with a long wire from all directions here they were rolled onto the tram bogeys for hauling to the mill by horse in the early days and then by locos okay and here she is one of heather's big logs rolled up onto the skids at the mill just below the skids there you can see the wooden rails of the old tramway pretty rough and ready and knocked about but they did the job they had to use very wide steel wheels on the bogeys of course because the wooden rails could vary a good bit this is an interesting old photo composed by the photographer it shows a log landing with a steam winch driver on the right another man is sitting on the corner of the mobile water tank which supplied water for the boiler harness horses are waiting to haul the bogeys and logs to the mill here's another photo of logs on the bogeys with horses hauling them to the mill sean casey eventually graduated from track maintenance to log-haul a driver for the mill that you'd be sitting there and this would be every signal boy or [Music] they had a horn rigged up on the there was a petrol logo and it was a long wire run back on the series of sticks like jig sticks like kettle jig sticks and you'd have this wire and when you pulled it it beeped and you'd be sitting there waiting or even reading a comic or a book and just waiting for them to get all everything ready and the beep would go and you jump up and be one bit first bit if it was one bip it was to go up in other words start winding and if he was winding you've got another bit it was not automatically stopped and if i wanted slack wire back you had two drums on the log order one was the outer would pull the wire back and you get two bips for that then when you've got the signal you get the signal to go up again and you'll probably get three bips that means you go up to the y titan and you stopped and so as the uh the schumann as those called it could tighten all the all the d straps and that up make sure it's all right before you got the okay to go and sitting on the log order when the log was broken out in other words pulled out red indeed and sniped uh i had a habit there's this log all it was screwed down real tight into a stump and screwed down on the blocks that were sitting on tight and after first day or two i'd tighten it up again but when the backs were turned i'd slag them off because i always like to log or lift them a little bit so as i knew when the log started to move she'd settle down and i could open the throttle and pull him out to the land and then he could have quite a series of blocks to go through you know pulling one angle to the next and um it was slightly up it was better for log all of them down there because the logs had chewed all over the place until you had the decent shoe road which had laid and pulled them up onto the land and rolled up and under the loco and into the mill heathers was a very unique operation having women working in the sawmill manpower being short in wartime it four five [Music] foreign [Music] um they had what they call a breaking down saw was the first saw it went through and if had a keel boat keel to cut which they always cut them for a wilson's at signet and it was a jones as a trial runner or somewhere up there always cut these boat kills 12 to 12 14 to 12 and soviet and if they wanted the 46 ft saw we'd take the saw out yang saw out put the log on the carriage and there was only that much few inches room between the saw and the log so we had to take it then put the soil back in split the log it was rolled down and went and pulled in halves pulled across onto the gang saw which is five saws and the whole half the log went through that then it was pulled onto the bench but if it was cutting them days of us cutting a lot of bridge decking the packing gap between the saws had put these packings in if i was cutting the boat keel for instance would be at the center of the half a log that put in if it was a 12 by 12 they'd put in a 12 inch pack and take the log through take off the sap wing pieces bring it back through and turn it over and put it through again and it was winched onto the bench and winched out down to the end of a wall down to the uh down to be shooting on the trolley down to a wharf it was all winch work but um if was cutting [Music] bridge deck and bridge stuff which was probably eight before eight by five as all the packers were set at eight inch and it was a good cutting you just wheel them straight off peel them off like palin and the biggest piece i see was um timber was off memory i think it was about a 20 by 18 piece of timber that's inches we're talking about and it was a massive flock and massive piece of timber and a long time getting because he had a pick a log that had the heart on one side so he had a big big big slits to cut it out of you'd be probably waiting for months to get that piece of timber but you'd get it but i'd hate to have to pay for it keels for larger vessels too big to go through the mill were squared on site in the bush and hauled to the building site by bullock team old john wilson of port signet is seen here with one such piece of timber now getting back to soil mills this is the old loon river mill where the mill was quite close to the river and the timber could be slid straight out onto the wharf where it was tallied ready to go to hobart by an energetic young ray chesterman it was all taken to hobart by five barge we decided foreign uh five five okay the apple industry consumed hundreds of thousands of apple cases the timber for these was usually cut in quite small mills dotted up and down the shore of the dontre castro channel as my old friend billy richards used to say little old box mills cut and box stuff we used to cut a lot of box timber from little mills that was set up with a an old fords and tractor all the old fords built years ago had a little shaft out the side with a pulley wheel on them and they'd go uh places where nobody lived and uh um just uh took a couple of piles in the water and um just a walkway out because you used to carry the the box material from where it was stacked on the edge of the water and out on board and they'd use the fords and tractor to just move the whole timber mill because the timber mill just consisted of the ferguson tractor the fords and tractor oh i got to know billy price about 1970 because i was fascinated with this catch the enterprise and he showed me over and talked about her and loaned me photos but he wouldn't be interviewed on audiotape he was too shy he was a reserve sort of a man he was a man who just lived and breathed the history of the catchers and the folklore but it was 32 years later 2002 when we were making trading out of hobart that had scotty mcdougall show us over the enterprise and what it was like to live aboard and work aboard a catch she was at the bishop sea life center by that time you felt like a bit of sleep this is your bedroom believe it or not this is what men worked under conditions two bunks here one here one there and they'd have two chaff bags full up a straw and you'd have to find your own blanket military coat was a popular thing then said oh boy you couldn't even read you never felt like reading anyhow after chucking 24 000 feet of timber about some of it 18 20 foot long 4b2s some 66s but anyway back to the sawmills and whatever i was taking and it was generally what they call market timber was a from a tuba one to a four by two it was all on one end of the jetty and the on the on the bottom end was all orders like marine board and bridgestone and resident your mandy she'd have to beat ugly's first level bill that oh boy would she carry a dollop i think she'd carry about three hundred thousand feet of timber and if you could get about three knots out of me you were lucky the best known trading catch is the famous may coin built in 1867. she tried for over a hundred years most of it under the flag of chesterman and co sawmills finally retiring in 1973. he used to see her unloading at the dock there back in the 60s painted dark red to hide the rust running down she'd been cut down in rig and she'd had the mizzen mast removed to make way for a wheel ass to be a bit more comfortable for the crew we're very fortunate that she's been restored in on displaying constitution doc hobart the last of her breed the last of the old traders out of hobart clyde mckay was skipper over in 1946 he'd just come back from the war as a guest to the japanese on the dreadful thai burma railway he always claimed that he'd survived the railway because of his good training in the old catchers the hard work and the hard tucker my queen was a delight to sail about half sheet and you could just sit there with half a spoke she was a beautiful thing very easy to handle she was a good cargo carrier so easy to stow no she was a delight i think the queen was one of the best little catchers out of hobart i honestly think that in the heyday of the catchers there'd be several loading at ramanir at the one time i can remember four barges pen there the my queen the marianne which were both testaments uh the secret and the burn gunner trevor tuttle was a may queen's last skipper seen here loading the old girl plenty of hard work involved with that keep you fit not too many fat barges about i'd go down stinking hot day and give his offsider a spell while he made a cup of tea and i'd be helping trevor load to load the timber and i think he went when i turned up he went he went a bit harder too it was hard work but when he had to move up and down the wharf you just sometimes you'd start to injure but nearly all the times you just unawk and pull her along load of the timber then they'd be working to watch the tide and be looking across the the creek and they had a marker of which was a flat rock until he had enough water to get out and if you had to be going flat out and watching the tide in the moment it was uh it was above the rock he had the barge turned and he was off and when she was loaded she was deck was almost level with water until she went out in the channel into the save and she'd dry six inches and just to how about six hours run there'd be three or four boats unloading we'd finish first right we'd wash the boat down everything else and we're going you'd go and help all the other ones unload them everybody help one another just it was just part of the process you know you'd help one another but now crikey [Music] no there were some marvelous chaps and it was funny some of those skippers when i was only a young fella they wouldn't be a lot older than me and they always missed her it was all we missed her you didn't call them my christian names you know that three-year-old kids call me clyde okay okay okay is oh foreign funny uh in the fruit season got a big black beautiful weekend and blackberries overnight even before we went to school it was well we had to pick blackberries i'm gonna get an extra dollar pictures was a dive and you had to walk and it was in the war years in and we we was allowed to go once a month that's it it's a war don't you know it was a war on boys which it was things were tough and there wasn't a lot of money about but we walk were once a month to the pictures and walk home again but the main if we played football play cricket and fishing in esperance river we've done a lot of fishing in the springs river because there's plenty of fish about them days and all you had to do you had to make your own fun and no tv there was a wireless i think at that early stages only one wireless in romania and that was we had that that had that old band master we used to look forward to our trips out of the the creek to go to dances and picture shows and that sort of thing but we'd always choose the ones that we wanted to go to we didn't go to everything and we had a buick motor car that dad would loan us and we'd all hop in and dress ourselves up to go to a ball or whatever was at southport or ramanier or loon river whatever was was going we were able to go to it usually used to get home in the morning when the roosters were crowing in the early hours but no we really enjoyed it there was never any fights or things like that walter and rose adams were long-standing identities at cockle creek yes uh foreign um and the mill at ramanir hardly everyone looked at their clock but always the mill whistle they knew what time it was from the mealworld and they were spot on they had to be spot on i even knew i could hear the mill with lee or dover in the blue at five o'clock twelve o'clock or twelve twelve thirty whenever it blew there huh um there was something about the whole thing you you knew it was a tough life it was a life you enjoyed and i wouldn't have missed a minute of it really i wouldn't have missed it never got into a lot of stride thank goodness [Music] gary kerr's australian maritime history series of dvds covers numerous facets of our amazing nautical past all these programs have a common thread primary information through first-hand accounts from the people who were there and did it all their memories are illustrated with period photos and footage and run for well over an hour [Music] two or three times a week you'd think you were going to die [Music] so you had to force yourself to live [Music] but when the water was murky though you didn't know what was coming came back at me flat out and um and smashed me into the bottom like really hard in abalone diving tasmania we hear from 15 people who were intimately involved with the fishery from its beginnings in the early 1960s till the present time this dvd runs for over an hour they tell us of hard times but also the good times before quotas were introduced when money flowed like water the days of wine women and song you know the ego was the thing you know and then there was the wanton waste of money whether it was just on ridiculous things cars sound systems stereos wives multiple wives guys just losing money because it all came too quick too easy the divers were daily immersed in the natural world and most of it was pristine [Music] they speak of the hazards of the bends nitrogen narcosis and interaction with sea creatures from parrotfish octopus seals dolphins orcas and of course sharks for all the dangers and risks involved few would have had it any other way i'm going to definitely keep you doing it while ever i can i'm not sick of it you can get sick of it i've been sick of it and then that's a i feel a little bit sorry for the younger blokes coming in nowadays they've got to catch a lot of abs it's one job it can be an awful bad job if you get sick of it you know working with a group of fellows particularly when the weather was fine around them in the summertime whether it was absolutely magic place to work in the summertime you know no swell you know some days were absolutely glory really we really had a great life we just should have had more time to enjoy it we just went and worked and worked great times gary wonderful life available from boat books australia by calling zero two nine four three nine double one double three

Channel: garry Kerr

Views: 129,501

Keywords:

Id: WARJgfFs7c0

Length: 55min 51sec (3351 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022