Milled Jarrah and pieces

[Cogito]

I guess I should have looked it up on google myself. Personally, I think we should use the Aboriginal names. They’ve known those trees for around 60000 years. They could probably teach us a lot about them.

 

[Cogito]

I agree, the only thing that I mill regular that's softer than Jarrah is Marri but all the other natives timbers are much harder.
I don't even mind milling Jarrah when its dry.
When jarrah logs comes into the yard for process I run my hands together - I love milling it.
This is only a small piece but its about 100 years since it came off teh tree as dry as a bone and it was very easy to cut.
View attachment 967822

You really can’t beat the old growth timber. Pity we chopped most of it down for railway sleepers and even road base. It should be a crime to waste beautiful timber like that.

 

[Rabid K9]

Swan River Mahogany - early 'marketing' name for E. marginata when exporting these remarkable 'new world' timbers.

There is still some coupes of old growth being put on the ground close to me. Incredible wastage.

Looked at one completed log landing few weeks back, biggest sheoak logs have seen left to rot into mud, should have been left standing.

 

[Cogito]

Swan River Mahogany - early 'marketing' name for E. marginata when exporting these remarkable 'new world' timbers.

There is still some coupes of old growth being put on the ground close to me. Incredible wastage.

Looked at one completed log landing few weeks back, biggest sheoak logs have seen left to rot into mud, should have been left standing.

I thought they had stopped the logging of old growth. ******* Wesfarmers has a lot to answer for.

 

[Rabid K9]

I thought they had stopped the logging of old growth. ****ing Wesfarmers has a lot to answer for.

Certainly slowed after the 99/00 RFA & governmental change, particularly in the old karri, with a big expansion in reserves, but the definition of 'old growth' was always a grey area, with plenty of lightly logged old jarrah, even jarrah wandoo coupes being harvested over recent decades.

Most is selective or partial harvest, so a lot less devastating than a clear felled karri forest coupe, but the wastage in terrible to see in these coupes.

Thing is, with McGowan's recent announcement of the 2024 phasing out of native forestry, we're missing out on opportunities for industries utilising out timbers in different ways. There is hundreds of thousands of hectares of young overcrowded regrowth & what is effectively karri plantation stagnating in the south west. We have some of the worlds best timbers, just need to look at using them in more efficient ways.

The Bunbury silicon smelter is the largest singular culprit of waste in the last twenty years, taking prime grade jarrah logs for industrial scale furnace firewood. Small local mills are buying firewood grade logs, to mill.

Active jarrah marri coupe April 2020, partial harvest, higher rainfall forest type in Donnelly River catchment, historic stumps negate the older forest characteristics on coupe. Can buy the 'firewood' grade logs pictured in some of photos circa $88.00 per tonne delivered, currently.

One the of 'lighter impact' coupes have inspected in recent years

 

[BobL]

Sorry, what’s the Swan River mahogany? I try to stick to the Latin. Otherwise you have to remember a bunch of names for the same tree.

That's what the early settlers called Jarrah. It also formed the basis for some dodgy timber substitution rackets in the 1970's and 80s where tropical hardwood which looked a bit like Jarra was palmed off to unsuspecting foreign buyers.

 

[BobL]

Swan River mahogany.
What with Alcoa extracting bauxite where it grows, and dieback (Phytophera) to which it is susceptible, the future for the species is not that rosy.

Some of the Jarrah logs we get comes from Alcoa clearances..