Timber Industry

George Augustus Frederick Elphinstone Dalrymple reported good stands of cedar in the Mossman and Daintree Rivers during his 1873 exploration of the Cardwell to Cooktown coast. This report was circulated and men began to flock to the area in search of the ‘red gold’.

Dan Hart, originally from Jamaica, arrived in Cooktown in 1874 to prospect for alluvial gold on the Palmer River. But he decided against mining and with many others, determined to seek his fortune as a timber getter in the extensive stands of cedar or ‘red gold’ on the Daintree and Mossman Rivers, following Dalrymple’s report. Previously the closest building timber came from Maryborough, nearly 1,000 miles away.

Hart and his team of seven men went to the Mossman River area where they cut 40,000 superfeet of cedar. All of his party suffered from malaria.

The men cut with axes, often on springboards driven into the tall ancient trees, and then using cross-cut saws they dissected the trunks into manageable logs They were floated downstream to the river mouth and made into rafts to tow out to the large ships waiting in deeper water

The tall trees were sacred to the local Kuku Yalanji people, and by trying to drive off the invaders, many attacks were made.

May 10 1875 Sydney Morning Herald : The cedar parties at the Daintree and Mossman Rivers have met with various success but on the whole have obtained a large quantity of cedar, which awaits shipment south. At present the rivers are quite deserted. The various parties have dropped in at Cooktown one after the other, nearly every man sick with fever of the worst type. The cedar is good in quality, and very plentiful in the broad flat area between the two mere, but the expense of working it is great. The scrub is as dense as a wall and the climate is unhealthy in the extreme, something like that experienced on the low flats along the Panama Isthmus of central America.

In August 1875 Edmund Hayes applied for 160 acres around the sawmill he had erected with Mr James Barclay (or Barklay) on the north bank of the Daintree near its mouth. This mill employed several men, with three separate saw benches. The SS Violet transported sawn timber from the mill and imported goods to the mill. After delivering a load of sawn timber to Townsville in January 1876, the Violet was caught in violent weather and damaged at Kissing Point, Townsville. When repaired, the ship continued to transport timber, only to be destroyed when trying to leave the Daintree River with a load in July 1876. The loss of the Violet and the impact of a flood on the Daintree impelled Barklay and Hayes to close the mill in September 1876, moving their 18 horsepower portable steam engine and equipment from the Daintree up to Revolver Point on the Palmer River.

Timber getters were still active in the area in 1878 and John Graham and party moved from the Daintree River to Mossman River, still cutting cedar for Rooney’s timber merchants of Townsville.

5 May 1883 The Week: We are shortly to have a saw mill, worked by water, on the latest scientific principles, on the property of Messrs Masterton and Jamieson whose efforts are deserving of every success. Cedar is becoming scarce. Fever is prevalent now, the worst time being after rain.

The water-driven turbine sawmill was operated by a waterfall on Martin’s Creek in the Daintree district, where the village gets still gets its water. It was short-lived and the enterprising men turned it into a water-cooled dairy.

2 Aug 1887 Maryborough Chronicle At Daintree the timber industry is in abeyance owing to the failure of its sawmill.

Although timber operations ceased on the Daintree, a mill thrived further north at the Bloomfield River, in association with a sugar mill.

After a lull of many years, in 1924 a sawmill was set up in Daintree township to benefit farmers clearing their land for dairying. They used the sawn timber to build houses and dairies to supply the new butter factory which was also operated by Daintree River Development Company, formed by Lucas Hughes, Tom Kilpatrick and H. Skennar. The butter factory and manager’s house were built from timber milled on the site. Initially both factories were run on the same steam boiler. The caravan park now occupies the site.

The sawmill was leased to Tasmanians N H Wellard & N Blackwood who installed a breaking-down saw and a vertical steam boiler that arrived from Port Douglas, floating behind the launch Echo. Both cedar and black bean were flitched (squared off) for shipment to England. Bullock teams hauled logs up the steep bank from the river to the sawmill.

The mill closed in 1942 with the onset of WWII. The departure of young men enlisting meant fewer trees were being cut .

At Cape Tribulation and Bailey’s Creek, the Mason family milled timber from at least 1931 until 1962. A boat would collect the furniture timber from both sites to take to Brisbane. The Bailey’s Creek mill closed in 1957. It had supplied timber for all the settlement buildings including a Post Office. Dave Mason skippered the Almason launch SS Caroo which loaded logs. Dave also piloted Burke’s Shipping Co boats into the wharf because of dangerous rocks.

Fred Bell Snr set up a sawmill at Saltwater Creek at Miallo in 1928 after running mills at the top of the Bump Track in 1925 to fulfil a contract to supply sleepers to Mossman Mill. He mainly relied on timber from the Bamboo/Whyanbeel area like oak and pencil cedar.

Fred Snr and Jnr set up a sawmill for George Quaid Jnr in Quaid St, Mossman in 1948.

Mossman had second sawmill, the Solander, in Sawmill Road which operated as a ply mill for some time.

From the early 1950s George Quaid ran a wooden barge to bring logs across the Daintree River from the Bailey’s Creek area for his Mossman Logging Company.

Early timber cutters were Roy Mealing and Tom Mackay. John Norris as a logging contractor and truck operator hauled three million superfeet of primary timber across the ferry from 1965 to 1968.

Between 1950 and 1970 many contractors from Mossman, Cairns and Innisfail came to cut timber. About 15 timber trucks were working constantly going backward and forward to the mill with their logs. The main timber they were logging was red cedar which was still much prized for its colour and texture.

Reference: Cattle, Cane and Cedar, Ken Keith (2017)