Author: Robert Onfray
Publisher: Forty South Publishing, 2020.
ISBN: 978-0-6486758-2-2
Buy through Forty South

The author has set himself an enormous task to survey in depth the history of the Surrey Hills district of north-west Tasmania. Fires, Farms and Forests represents the culmination of much detailed and careful research, combined with the author’s extensive personal experience as a forester, and, in particular, his role managing the native grasslands and buttongrass moorlands on Surrey Hills. All this enables the author to weave a story which encompasses both general history as well as specialist insights into the management of land and forests.

Whilst the overall focus of the book is on the period since the arrival of Europeans, the author stresses the importance of indigenous activity in Surrey Hills:

The Aboriginal history for tens of thousands of years before Europeans arrived was not written in documents. It was then and is still today written in the landscape of this magnificent place. The mosaic of tall wet Eucalyptus forest, open woodland, dense callidendrous rainforest and endemic montane grasslands was created and nurtured by Aboriginal firestick land management. It was a living system that provided rich hunting grounds and the essentials of survival in this place.

And:

I turned my attention to Aboriginal studies. Material about Aboriginal burning practices was limited but I read anthropological and archaeological studies that had been carried out across Tasmania. Richard Cosgrove introduced me to late Pleistocene occupation in south-west Tasmania. One of his studies showed that wallabies, the principal food supply of the Aborigines, were found in large concentrations among a patchwork of native grasslands. Bob Ellis’ work on the central highlands of Tasmania examined the impacts on the vegetation after the Aborigines were removed. I imagined that perhaps the grasslands on Surrey Hills had been created by humans. After collating archaeological studies that had been carried out on Surrey Hills in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became clear that the Aboriginal people had occupied this area. For example, they had a chert quarry to make their own stone tools at Parrawe near the western edge of Surrey Hills.

These insights enable us to start to view indigenous occupation in perhaps a very different light to that which may have been seen previously.

Much of the book is concerned with the trials and tribulations of the directors of the major landowner in the Surrey Hills region, the Van Diemen’s Land Company, and their assortment of long-suffering managers, as they experimented with various forms of agriculture, forestry, real-estate, railway construction, brickworks and port development on their allotment of 350,000 acres. Most of this land was covered in eucalypt and rainforest with cleared farming land being the exception. From the start, the anticipated business of the Van Diemen’s Land company, breeding Merino sheep to produce fine wool, was going to face significant challenges.

As with all things involving land and animals, nothing went entirely to plan and success was often found more by way of good luck rather than according to what was intended. For example, it was found that cattle, especially the Kyloe (Highland), Durham, Ayrshire and Hereford breeds, were more successful than Merino sheep on Surrey Hills.

Forest management practices are discussed, including burning programmes by both European and indigenous occupiers:

An Honours thesis from Emma Watson confirmed that some grasslands are pre-European but quite recent – only 500 years old, and that there is evidence of burning and open eucalypt forests going back at least 9,000 years.

Investigations show that raw materials were also exploited by the aboriginal occupiers. Studies on significant chert quarries found on the western boundary of Surrey Hills suggest exploitation for raw material carried out at least 3,500 years ago.

The activities of explorers such as Henry Hellyer and James ‘Philosopher’ Smith, the discoverer and developer of the world’s richest tin mine,  Mt. Bischoff, are discussed, along with the interconnection between their activities and those of the Van Diemen’s Land Company – such as the use of the Emu Bay Railway owned by the Van Diemen’s Land Company (the longest wooden tramway in the world) to transport the Mt. Bischoff tin to the Company’s port at Burnie for export.

Ultimately, however, after experimenting with various varieties of wood, the industry which came to thrive ultimately in the vast expanse of the Surrey Hills, was timber grown for pulp and paper production.

The involvement of the major newspaper and mining companies of the day such the Electrolytic Zinc Company and John Fairfax & Sons Limited saw this industry commence in the 1930s. Thereafter followed sawmills, hardwood plants and eucalyptus plantations at scale.

Insights are provided into leading foresters who drove the industry forward, such as Reg ‘Bull’ Needham.

Along the way moorlands were drained and grasslands were improved upon which a world leading Red Angus breeding herd and a Romney Sheep Stud were developed up until the time when the land was required for plantation.

The author points out the significant contributions to the local communities made by the forestry companies, such as educational facilities and swimming pools, as well as the research and development investment made into developing eucalypt plantation silviculture and industrial scale plantation estates.

The author takes us up to the present day through the ups and, ultimately, the downs of the Gunns era, involving as it did regular conflicts with environmentalist activists and politicians. The end result being the formation of Forico.

Forico is a plantation only business and manages the non-plantation elements of Surrey Hills for environmental values….. Forico has also become the first company in Australia to enter into a long-term contract with the Australian Government to sell carbon credits generated from its plantation activities by implementing the Plantation Methodology under the Emissions Reduction Fund…. As part of its commitment to sustainable management practices, Forico is looking to ‘make every hectare count’. This has meant the development of a new paradigm shift in business practices that incorporates the environment within operational and financial decision making. In 2016, Forico started to investigate account based approaches to recognise, record and value a broader set of environmental benefits from their forest estate beyond plantation wood fibre. This is a world first attempt to do this in a forestry context. Ecosystems are mapped into management zones or ecosystem asset classes. Each zone is classified by land use and land cover, recognising the difference between plantation forests and natural areas, and the ecosystem services they provide.

The final chapter of the book – is a tribute to those people who were involved in the conservation management of Surrey Hills and who have been instrumental in recognising these values, and ensuring they are retained and managed in perpetuity.

A fitting end to a wonderfully detailed account not only of the Surrey Hills, but, through it, important elements in the history of Tasmania and the industrial development of Australia as a whole.

The author has gone to significant lengths to provide us with very detailed listings of historical records, a bibliography, footnotes and an index.

A major work on forestry in Australia and one which should be required reading for anyone interested in the subject.

The book may be purchased online here.