The South Coast Timber Industry

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The South Coast Timber Industry

An abundance of suitable trees, the wide variety of timbers available, and the enormous range of timber-based products that could be supplied, ensured that there was a very significant timber industry along the whole NSW South Coast during the second half of the 19th and throughout the whole of the 20th centuries.

The history of the South Coast timber industry is particularly interesting because of the of the changes that occurred to it over that time: it was an industry that was gradually transformed from a labour-intensive, manual industry to one that became highly mechanized; it changed from being based on small, family-led enterprises to one dominated and operated by large companies; a reliance on bullocks and horses disappeared as trucks and specialist mechanical timber-getting equipment were introduced; there were significant periods of ‘boom’ and ‘bust’; and the gathering and production of some timber products simply disappeared completely over this period.

The Industry’s History in Brief

Timber-getting on the South Coast started in the 1840s and, in areas like Batemans Bay, convicts were probably utilised in the early days to cut and haul logs. These logs were used to build local houses and fences.

Initially many of the trees in the area were considered as valueless - particularly as there was then no way for timber to be easily transported to potential markets. But land settlement policies of the time favoured the clearing of trees, so thousands of hectares of trees were simply ringbarked and burnt by settlers. By 1916 the Sydney Morning Herald was observing ‘the hills (around Bega) are denuded of most of their original forest trees and are well grassed…the picturesque town compares, or rather contrasts, with the place of well nigh 40 years ago...and, reflecting the thinking of the time, ‘refinement marks the landscape’!

The extensive clearing of the lowland forest cover throughout the area ironically allowed various wattle species, including Black Wattle, to rapidly colonise the area – which, in coming decades, led to the establishment of an additional, new, profitable forest industry: the gathering and processing of wattle bark. This forestry activity was to provide employment on the NSW South Coast through to the 1970s.

From the 1850s, manually operated saw pits and saw mills began to be established along the South Coast. These typically were located along rivers which enabled easy transport of logs to mills, sawn timber to be moved away from the mills and, with the introduction of steam mills (Bega’s first steam sawmill, for example, was built in 1869), provided them with ready access to water for their boilers.

Because there was an expanding market in Sydney, sawn timber production on the South Coast grew rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. By 1883 there were 13 sawmills operating in the Batemans Bay area; by 1900 there were at least 10 steam powered sawmills operating in the Eden-Wyndham-Tantawanglo area. These typically were small, family-run enterprises that were often financed by large city timber merchants who guaranteed to take a significant portion of the mill’s output.

And from the 1870s, South Coast timber was being exported to overseas markets including New Zealand, South Africa and England.

From around the late 1800s, very high demand emerged on the NSW South Coast for a new timber product – sleepers for railway lines. This provided employment for hundreds, if not thousands, of locals.

By the 1920s, timber cutting for saw logs and sleepers became one of the primary industries along the NSW South Coast. And, unquestionably, the transport of these products significantly contributed to the viability of what became a thriving coastal shipping industry.

In fact, the demand in the area for ships was so great that many were constructed specifically to transport timber and sleepers from the South Coast. Timber companies built or purchased their own ships: for example, in 1909 the Wee Clyde was built by the Clyde Sawmilling Company which then changed its name to the Clyde Sawmilling and Shipping Company; Mitchell Brothers built the Kianga; Allen Taylor and Company had the Narooma, Uralla and Narani built to transport their timber to Sydney. And the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company, the major shipping company on the South Coast, purchased ships such as the Bodalla, Tilba and Benandra that were specifically designed to transport timber alongside other general cargo.

The demand for local ships and the availability of suitable local timber also led to the development of a substantial coastal shipbuilding industry, most significantly around the shores of Wagonga Inlet and the Clyde River.

During the 1930s the local timber industry experienced a major change with the widespread introduction of motorized trucks. These not only heralded the demise of the use of bullocks and horses by timber-getters, but also led to the relocation of timber mills from isolated bush locations to major towns along the coast.

World War II resulted in a significant increase in demand for timber, but manpower shortages proved to be a major problem. The result was that small sawmills increasingly were taken over by the timber merchants to whom they had historically been financially dependent, and log supply and processing became concentrated in significantly fewer hands.

The demand for timber again increased significantly after World War II, but from the early 1950s the timber industry was to experience a gradual decline. Small sawmills all around the State were regularly closing down (there were 1,360 sawmills in NSW in 1951; this dropped to just 311 by 2004), and things were certainly no different along the NSW South Coast.

In 1968, however, a major change in logging practices was introduced: selective logging (harvesting of sawlogs only) was replaced in some areas by integrated logging (the simultaneous harvesting of sawlogs and timber suitable for use as pulpwood). NSW agreed to supply Harris-Daishowa Pty Ltd with 500,000 tonnes of wood each year from the forests of the south-eastern corner of the State for use in paper manufacturing in Japan and South Korea, and a major chip mill export facility was erected on the shores of Twofold Bay near Eden to enable export of this.

A period of unprecedented utilization of local forests resulted. Timber extraction had suddenly become economic in steeper parts of forestry areas, an extensive period of road-building was undertaken by the NSW Forestry Commission in local forests, and integrated logging was gradually extended to other forests in the area.

The NSW Forestry Commission

As was to be expected, a valuable natural resource such as timber very quickly attracted government attention and control.

Regulations affecting the timber industry were introduced from the early 1800s: by 1820 timber getters were required to have licenses (there were only issued to ‘persons of good character’) which stipulated the amount of timber that could be collected; by 1851 fines of up to £10 were imposed on those cutting timber without a permit.

In 1877 a Forestry Conservancy branch of the NSW Department of Lands was established and the first forest areas were reserved for logging in the future. By 1882 there were 1.4 million hectares of forest in reserve for future use.

In 1909 a NSW Department of Forestry was established when it was accepted that throughout Australia some form of industry control was necessary if the country was to become self-sufficient in timber.

In 1916 the NSW Forestry Commission replaced the Department of Forestry and most of the remaining forest areas in the State were dedicated as State Forests. Mumbulla and Tanja State Forests (between Bega and Bermagui) were among the first to have their timber-producing potential assessed and to become Forestry areas.

In 2012 the NSW Forestry Commission became the NSW Forestry Corporation.

Major forestry products produced on the South Coast have included:

Sawn Timber

This has been the industry staple, supplying everything from massive structural timber beams for bridges and wharves to smaller timber pieces for building, flooring and fence palings.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, hardwood props, 12 to 20cm thick and 1.8 to 5 metres in length, were also milled and supplied for use in coal mines around Wollongong and Port Kembla.

Railway Sleepers

Demand for hardwood railway sleepers emerged during the late 1800s from throughout Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, China, South Africa and Europe.

By 1907, fifty cutters were working in the Eden district shaping sleepers principally from Woollybutt, Blackbutt and Grey Box. In 1911, more than 94,000 sleepers were cut, dressed and shipped from various points around Twofold Bay, and in one month in 1911, the Forest Guard (the sleeper inspector) certified 7,000 sleepers for shipment from Bermagui and Narooma.

During the Great Depression, 300 sleeper cutters were working in the Eden area alone.

By 1934 supplies of Wollybutt, Blackbutt and Grey Box were nearly exhausted, so greater use was then made of Silvertop Ash. In the 1950s mechanized swing saws replaced the hand shaping of sleepers using broadaxes…but by the late 1950s lack of demand for wooden railway sleepers meant that the local sleeper industry had virtually disappeared.

Sleeper cutters were licensed and had an individual brand that was stamped on the end of each sleeper and on the stump of every tree felled. While the work was hard, sleeper cutting could be lucrative: in the 1900s cutters were paid 9d per sleeper and a good cutter could shape between 72 and 96 sleepers in a six-day week, which resulted in an income of 50% or more than the then basic wage.

Sleepers were shipped from wharves at ports such as Eden, Merimbula, Tathra, Bermagui and Batemans Bay, but thousands of sleepers were also shipped from other riverside locations all along the coast. Huge ‘sleeper dumps’ were prominent local features at the time, with the dump at Dickenson Point in Bermagui, for example, often holding 5,000 sleepers awaiting shipment.

Wattlebark

Wattle bark provided tannins used in the tanning industry. There are records of a load of bark being sent from Eden in 1843 on the vessel St Heliers, well before the gathering of wattlebark became a significant industry on the NSW South Coast from the mid-1860s. The industry survived for a century, finally dying out in the early 1970s.

Basically, bark was stripped from near the base and up to the branches of Black Wattle trees. It was then dried for several days before being cut into one metre lengths and tied into 16kg bundles which were transported to tanneries in Sydney. In later times, mills operated on the South Coast (for example at Bermagui and Cuttagee) where the bark was chopped before it was bagged and shipped to Sydney.

Collecting wattlebark was quite a lucrative undertaking, particularly in the period prior to World War I, with some settlers able to pay for their land from the proceeds of the bark collected from local trees.

Charcoal

A shortage of petrol during and immediately after World War II led to a demand for charcoal to fuel charcoal burners that were fitted to motor vehicles. This created a thriving, if short-lived, local industry.

Logs were rolled into large pits in the ground, set on fire, and then covered with sheets of tin and soil. The fire then choked out, leaving charcoal that was subsequently bagged and shipped to market.

Eucalyptus Oil

A local eucalyptus oil industry took advantage of the availability of Black Peppermint trees on the South Coast.

The manufacturing process was simple: trees were felled and their leaves were removed; these were packed into steel tanks which were then filled with sufficient water to generate steam once a fire had been lit underneath the tank; the steam separated the eucalyptus oil from the leaves, and the eucalyptus oil was collected after being condensed in a long pipe that ran off from the tank.

Woodchips

Wood chipping ensured greater use of available timber resources and increased the potential value from each hectare of forest that was harvested. Timber unsuitable for milling (for example, trees that were bent) could be woodchipped, and these trees suddenly were found to have an economic value. The result was that areas previously deemed uneconomic to harvest became attractive and, over time, were logged.

The initial commitment in 1968 was for at least 500,000 tonnes of wood to be provided each year from the forests of the south-eastern corner of the State to the woodchip mill being built near Eden. This supply was initially drawn from forests around Eden, but by 1977 it had expanded to the forest areas around Bega. By the year ending 30 June 2011 over 1 million tonnes of woodchips were being exported per year from this mill.

The woodchip plant and associated infrastructure at Twofold Bay was destroyed by bushfires in January 2020, but Allied Natural Wood Exports, its operator, rebuilt the facility and added a sawmill and a briquette plant to the site.

Sources: ‘History of Bermagui’s Timber Industry’ by Allan Douch (Bermagui Historical Society); ‘History of Land Use in the Dry River/Murrah Catchment’ by Anthony Scott (CSIRO, 1999); ‘Australia and New Zealand Forest Histories’ edited by John Dargavel (Australian Forest History Society Inc. 2005); ‘South Coast Register’ 4.9.2018; ‘Timber Railway Sleeper’ in Bega Shire’s Hidden Heritage at www.bit.ly/begahh90; ‘Narooma’s Past: Steamers, Sawmills and Salmon’ by Laurelle Pacey; Information displayed at National Timber Workers Memorial, Eden.

Picture: Batemans Bay Timber Wharf