George Goyder calls in 1870s to create forest reserves in South Australia with 'painful' loss of its native trees
Timber being carted from Wirrabara (Whites) Forest of the southern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Regular timber teamsters also used bullocks for carting timber until the late 1920s.
Image courtesy Flinders Range Research
George Goyder, South Australia’s government surveyor general and its leading public servant from 1861 to 1893, repeatedly warned in the early 1870s that, “in whatever direction my duty takes me, the rapid decrease in (native) forest trees is painfully and prominently before me” and he called for forest reserves to be started.
South Australia, the driest colony in the driest continent of the world had limited forest cover when Europeans arrived in the 19th Century. This natural scarcity worsened when they began clearing the land for agriculture.
Among the few heavily timbered areas, Wirrabara Forest, previously Whites Forest, on the eastern slopes and foothills of the southern Flinders Ranges soon attracted the attention of timber cutters. During the early 1850s, its trees were cut to be used as fence posts, building material and firewood. This extended to more industrial use for the nearby Charlton mine and Burra Burra, Moonta and Wallaroo copper mine further south.
Hardy individuals such as Charles Crew, Edward Atkins, Edward Dansie, David Christie. Alexander Bowman, Henry Bear, Claus Botherim (Bathern) and Sam Challinger, with their families, worked the forest, cutting and carting timber, in primitive conditions from the 1850s.
Wirrabara timber would later be used on bigger projects such as the Darwin-to-Adelaide overland telegraph, railway sleepers for the Pichi Richi, Petersburg (Peterborough)-Silverton, Great Northern and Terowie rail lines, charcoal for the Broken Hill mines and for South Australia’s longest jetty at Port Germein on Spencer Gulf.
During the 1860s, a timber licence could be obtained from the South Australian government for £5 per year, giving landholders the right to cut and remove unlimited native timber, mostly hardwood, that peakws in the 1880s. The timber cutters provided extra income for nearby farmers during lean times by transporting wood to Laura, the nearest railhead.
In 1870, surveyor-general George Goyder’s concerns about overexploitation of native forests did prompt a parliamentary committee to investigate creating forest reserves. Goyder had strong support of member of parliament Friedrich Krichauff, a botany graduate from Germany and now an experienced South Australian horticulturalist Krichauff. Goyder’s biggest supporter outside the parliament was another German-born South Australian, Richard Schomburgk, director of Adelaide Botanic Garden.
But Krichauff and Schomburgk made claims for forests, based on the experience in Germany, that they couldn't fulfil in the very different climate of South Australia. Krichauff spoke of the need to plant extensively in the north of South Australia so forests would induce rain to transform the climate of those regions. This is where he departed from Goyder whose famous line had divided the arable areas to the south from the unreliable climate in the north of South Australia. Krichauff’s arguments set off long debates with arguments including one member of parliament opposing urban forestry that would flood Adelaide city and its suburbs.
At last, in 1873, an Act was passed in parliament was to encourage the planting of forest trees. Any person planting five acres or more with forest trees was entitled to a land order of £2 for each acre established. Only four applications were received.
The Act’s real value lay in helping to nurture what Krichauff called a “forest culture’” among South Australian colonists. It kept alive the notion of forests and their importance with legislators and the public, highlighted by the newspapers that reported extensively on parliamentary debates.