Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

The line, like all Western Australian railways, was laid on a narrow gauge, with the result that the carriages jolted and rocked like a small boat in a storm. An odd little characteristic feature of West Australian travelling is that at the end of each carriage is suspended a canvas water-bag, with a cup attached to it. They are also seen hanging in verandahs, impressing on the stranger that he is in a dry and thirsty land, where water is always precious.

One of the advantages of the Western Australian climate is that the nights are cool, though the spring sunshine was intensely hot. Whoever organised this Government visit to the sawmills had a very high standard of comfort, for from first to last it was most admirably arranged. We were a small but very pleasant little party, and met and talked in the friendly Australian way, in each other’s compartments. About nine o’clock a light supper was brought round, and we soon after went to bed and fitfully to sleep under a mountain of rugs. Whenever the train stopped there was a loud chorus of frogs from unseen swamps.

We were called next morning by the conductor bringing us tea, and later, while we were dressing, he came round with fruit. We woke to find ourselves already in the depths of the forest among the soaring white trunks of the karri, the early sun tinging their smooth trunks with red. The line had been recently made, and the sleeping cars were very heavy, so we proceeded slowly. There was very little sign of life; we could almost feel the great deep silence of the forest, moist, and fresh, and cold, in the frost of early morning, for it lies 400 feet above the sea level, and the temperature was very different from that of the dry sandy plains of Perth. At long intervals solitary wooden houses stood in little clearings, with grave-eyed children before the doorway, shading their eyes to watch the unfamiliar passage of a big train. More seldom we came upon a scattered village of tents, roughly put up like a gipsy encampment, pitched among the damp undergrowth. There was something pathetic in the deep isolation of these pioneers, though the near neighbourhood of the railway made their lives almost metropolitan, compared with those of many Australian settlers.

As we drew nearer to our journey’s end, we passed an occasional small clearing, where the yellow sandy soil had already been planted with apple trees for the fruit growing, which is one of the industries of the future for Western Australia; or patches of forest had been ringbarked,[5] and left to die, after the cheap but wasteful method of clearing in use. Visitors to Australia cannot help being impressed with the waste of timber, which seems appalling to an inhabitant of an over-populated northern country, where everything grows slowly, and every inch of wood has its economic value. They are too ready to rush into print, or public pronouncements, on a subject of which only prolonged residence in the country, and a more than superficial study of its economic problems, could enable them to judge. In the first place the cost of transport is prohibitive, or means of transport may even be non-existent; and secondly, in a new country time is money. Great tracts of forest all over Australia are ringbarked and left to rot. In the Government sawmills at Big Brook, the debris of the great karri trees is lost. There is wholesale waste, wholesale destruction of timber going on in Australia, the least intelligent observer cannot fail to mark it, but time is literally money in Australia. “We can’t afford to wait,” said one of the leading statesmen of Western Australia, commenting on the waste of timber at Big Brook. “We sacrifice five pounds to gain twenty,” said one of the shrewdest and best-informed officials of Victoria.

By the common process of ringbarking, dead trees are left standing over great areas of forest land, vast white skeleton armies, a strange and desolate sight. If the land is to be used for arable purposes, the trees have to be removed; but for pasture, when the trees are dead, and can no longer deprive the grass of nourishment and moisture, they remain standing for years, till in time with the process of the seasons, and the attacks of insects, the hard wood decays and crumbles away. Thus the destruction of forests goes on in order to provide timber for building; for fencing, mining, fuel, as well as for commercial purposes of export, or to improve, or create, arable or pasture land. In Western Australia besides, green timber is cut for fuel, in the neighbourhood of the goldfields, because of the scarcity of coal, but natural reafforestation is usually allowed to proceed. However, when all these necessities are admitted, there has been a deplorable waste of timber, the want of which is already felt in settled districts; and it is hoped that further wanton destruction will be prevented, and replanting will be undertaken by all the states. Official opinion is becoming alive to the importance of the question to the future history of Australia. Victoria and New South Wales are doing some planting, but South Australia is the only state in which forest plantation is being carried on on a large scale.[6]

The railway ended abruptly in a large clearing in the forest about fifteen miles from the coast and two hundred miles from Perth. The air was that of a keen autumn morning, and we climbed down from our carriages, for there was of course no platform, feeling stiff and chilly, to find breakfast waiting for us in a big wooden hall, with a great fire blazing in the kitchen, which opened out of it, the most cheering and comfortable sight in the wilderness. These halls are a feature of backwood settlements in Australia; they are utilised for all social and business purposes, and are the common meeting ground of the community. In this instance the landlord leased the building from the state, and provided meals for the men employed in the sawmills. He invited us to inspect his pleasant kitchen, the floor sanded with sweet-smelling, deep-red sawdust. At the back he was putting up bedrooms in small detached one-storied wooden buildings. Big Brook with its keen, pure air, the sweet, clean scent of the fresh-sawn wood, and all round, the illimitable forest, mysterious and impenetrable, would be an ideal resting-place, if anyone in Australia were ever over-worked.

But meanwhile breakfast was waiting for us, a never-to-be-forgotten breakfast of good coffee, hot rolls, porridge, new-laid eggs, and chops the tenderest in the world, the product of the local sheep. Fig jam, with which it concluded, was excellent. Figs grow readily in Western Australia, and produce abundant crops of fruit. They were very noticeable at this time of year, as they were the only deciduous tree.

After breakfast we visited the whole settlement, which of course was built entirely of wood. In the school, in a bright, cheerful classroom, a master was conducting the tiny classes of well-dressed, rosy-cheeked children. Opposite the school was a billiard-room, where the men could meet in the evenings; there was also a bank, and a post office. We were impressed by the splendid physique of the men; they were as agile as cats, muscular and supple; and these qualities were necessary, for the work is very dangerous from the moment the axe is laid to the root of the tree. The logs are of immense weight, they bound and crash down the incline to the back of the mill, when they are unloaded from the truck, and fly asunder with great force when they are sawn. The log, or trunk of the tree is first sawn in two longitudinally, and is then again cut into smaller and smaller slices, till it becomes planks. The saws are graduated, becoming more and more fine. The task of keeping them true is an accomplishment of great delicacy, it is one man’s work; he corrects deviations in the metal with a hammer, judging them entirely by eye.

In the neighbourhood of the sawmill all the air is filled with flying sawdust, and the sweet scent of the freshly sawn wood. The dust falls to the ground in deep red masses, the flying chips look like scraps of raw meat, but the rich colour fades when they dry. The process of preparing the karri wood for use is at present a very expensive one. The planks have to be stewed in order to preserve them. They are put for this purpose into immense tanks of molasses, and left seething there to harden. It is hoped that scientific experiment may evolve a less costly method. After going over the mills we were taken up a little railway line into the forest to see a tree felled. We sat on benches on trucks behind the engine, which carried a supply of wood for its boiler, for the cost of bringing coal up to Big Brook would be quite prohibitive. Even the boilers that work the mills are fed with wood. The engine was run by a magnificent-looking old stoker with a white beard and the air of a patriarch. When we scrambled off the trucks on to the soft, rich earth of the forest, we had to wait to let a bullock team go by, twenty-four of them pulling one log with a big metal “shoe” on the end to prevent its digging into the ground. The passage left a deep slide in the red earth. The bullocks are bound together in twos by very uncomfortable-looking, heavy wooden yokes, and their progress is punctuated by frightful yells and cracking of whips from the drivers.