The Early Timber Industry
Feb 2012. by Trevor Keightley and Lillian Coyne.

Timber getting or harvesting was the first economic venture in the area and has remained an important industry in the district. The following is a tribute to the early settlers skills and courage in clearing the scrub into the habitated district we have today.

The settlers were attracted to the district by the great stands of timber, both hardwoods and Hoop and Kauri Pines. In the very early days, timber-getters made no permanent settlements: they were itinerant workers, equipped with axes, wedges and cross cut saws, and often with only their bullock teams and dogs for company. Later as semi-permanent tracks were carved through the seemingly impenetrable scrub, some based themselves near the foot of the mountain, building slab huts to house their wives and families.

Charles Augustus Stringer is the first recorded timber-getter to select land in the Bauple area in 1869 followed by Samuel Inker in 1870 and John Stratford in 1880. Later the Andrews brothers, James Isbister, Bob Cunningham, Henry Missing and the Connors family to name a few became involved in the Timber-getting.

Edward Armitage who arrived in Maryborough in 1860’s has left one of the few records of the industry in those early days. He said, “Arriving in Maryborough I joined a party of timber-getters.

The timber then grew in the virgin scrubs and forests on the banks of the rivers and creeks, the haulage was so short that only snigging chains and block wheel trolleys were needed. I once cut a pine tree mast for a vessel not far from the bank of the Mary River in Maryborough. I went to work in the log timber trade at Mt Boople with the Andrew brothers who are now growing sugar cane and cattle on the cleared scrub lands where they cut pine in the wilds 50 years ago.”

In the early days the logs were snigged out of the forests by bullock team, loaded onto bullock wagons and carted to the Mary River and its tributaries, awaiting the river to rise high enough to float the logs (lashed together) to the Maryborough sawmills. Later they were taken to the nearest railhead or by horse team to the saw mills.

A feature article in the Sydney Mail, 1925 entitled “A Giant of the Queensland Bush” gives some insight into both the size of the trees felled in those days and also the working conditions of timber getters. “A well-known land mark for over 40 years, it was the last of the big giants and was growing on the side of the mountain. 2 men worked on it for 3 months till they got it to level ground, the old hands predicted failure–because of the steepness of the gullies, it would get away from them and bust itself-up. When the tree fell it wiped out an acre and a half of scrub. It yielded 16 logs and 18,000 superficial feet, the length of the trunk to the first limb was 60 feet.”

The logs were taken by bullock team to Gundiah and rail to the Ipswich workshops for making railway carriages. The timber-getters that cut this giant were Jack Groundwater and Fraser Jamieson. (Jim Groundwater said the diameter of the log was greater than the railway carriage, they had to cut grooves in the log to fit the pins in.)

Above: Fraser Jamieson (left) and Jack Groundwater in front of timber brought from Bauple Mountain in 1925. Below: Jack Groundwater’s horse team in front of Tiaro‘s Royal Hotel.