Tasmania

Will the dominos fall across the country after Victoria and Western Australia ended the harvesting of native forests?

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It seems that the people who came up with the plan to return all Western Australia’s and Victoria’s public land to a cycle of lockup and incinerate wilderness management know as much about forest management and timber supply timelines as an average kindergarten pupil. – Quote from South East Timber Association

When I started as a young forester in the late 1980s, I yearned for the opportunity to work in our native forests.

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The humble clothes peg

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Ever since humans have worn garments, they have had to wash them. Where to put the garments to dry has a fascinating history. We always think that pegs hung them. However, clothes pegs only have a relatively recent past. Before the nineteenth century, laundry was hung on bushes, limbs or lines without fasteners to hold the clothes in place. … Read more

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Reclothing fertile acres – a history of Parrawe

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“Soon the haunting atmosphere of these forgotten farms will be a thing of the past and stately forests will reclothe these fertile acres”. Cath Lott

Introduction

Parrawe is located on the basaltic plateau immediately west of Surrey Hills, north of the Wandle River, and south of the Hellyer Gorge. This tongue of land ranges from 500 metres to 640 metres above sea level.

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The 1939 fires – a blame game

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“And of course there were ignitions by the fistful. Lightning kindled some fires, but most emanated from a register of casual incendiarists that reads like a roster of rural Australia: settlers, graziers, prospectors, splitters, mineworkers, arsonists, loggers and mill bushmen, hunters looking to drive game, fishermen hoping to open up the scrub around the streams, foresters unable to contain controlled burns, bush residents seeking to ward off wildfire by protective fire, travellers and transients of all kinds.

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The silver town that was auctioned off the face of the earth

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After James ‘Philosopher’ Smith discovered the rich Mount Bischoff tin deposit near Waratah in 1871, there was a keenness to prospect other areas of the West Coast region. Prospector William Robert Bell was one of them. He was employed by the Van Diemen’s Land Company (VDL Co.) in May 1875 to carry out prospecting on the eastern boundary of Hampshire Hills following the discovery of tin near Mount Housetop, some three miles away.

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From Bischoff Tinlanders to Parrawe Rovers – a potted history of the Waratah District Football Association

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Football was played in and around the Waratah district not quite continuously from the 1880s until 1953. However, organising a competitive competition was a challenging enterprise. At any time, the local competition only had three teams and played under different rules, the main one allowing less than 18 players per side.

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Wake up Australia – renewable energy won’t save the planet if it costs the earth

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 “Sadly, our climate and energy policy remains in the grip of an intelligentsia that lacks the wisdom to recognise the boundaries of its own ignorance”. Nick Cater

“…destroying the landscape with inferior technologies that cost more and do not achieve the desired policy aim of Net Zero is insane”.

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