Hatfield River

Extending the railway to the west coast

Introduction

In my book “Fires, Farms and Forests”, I dedicated a chapter to outline the construction of a horse-drawn wooden tramway in the mid-late 1870s. The chapter focused on the monumental task of constructing 74 kilometres of a new line through some sections of dense rainforest, all cleared by hand.

As I wrote in the book, I believe it is the longest wooden tramway built in the world.

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Surveying on Surrey Hills Part 2 – From Chain to GPS

Technological Developments that changed surveying

In the first blog, we discussed the labour-intensive and time-consuming aspects of surveying. In this second part, we will look at the changes that occurred as a result of technology and how they made surveying a completely different vocation, and how these developments led to some major civil projects undertaken by the Roading & Survey Team at AFH/NFP.

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Morris “Mort” Bloom – my career with AFH

This month is a guest blog from Morris “Mort” Bloom.

Some of my most memorable days in the bush were marking road lines with Mort. My role was to source timber mostly from private property for the logging contractors under my supervision. Some were easily accessible across grass paddocks in the summer.… Read more

Sod seeding on Surrey Hills in 1960

Bob Hardy was born and grew up in Burnie. His mother, a Jones, came from a mixed farm at Cuprona, with her Jones line going back to Britton Jones, the ex-convict who built Franklin House. As a twenty-year-old graduate from Hawkesbury Agricultural College, Bob first started working on Surrey Hills in 1960.… Read more