John Williams, Treasures of Nhill & District Facebook page 14 June 2025, Nhill Free Press & Kaniva Times

While the local “murmuring” Buloke tree is recognised for its hardwood properties, said to be the toughest in the world, the humble Mallee root, while also tough, has many other useful attributes.

A Mallee root is the extremely hard, woody root of a mallee tree, a dwarf eucalypt, that is often used for firewood, but is also valued by wood-turners because of its marbled grain.

And Aboriginal tribes have used the Mallee root for centuries for tools, weapons, and medicinal purposes.

Most Mallee trees originate in arid and semi-arid regions and instead of just a single trunk; they have many stems that rise from a large bulbous woody structure called a lignotuber, or Mallee root.

In 1902 The Bulletin magazine wrote – ‘Nobody knows who made the Mallee, but the Devil is strongly suspected’.

Millions of Mallee roots have been “harvested” from cleared farms around Nhill. Farmers cleared their scrubland with caterpillar tractors dragging a heavy chain or a large steel roller, often an old boiler. The first rollers were large red gum logs dragged by bullock teams.

Back in the 1800’s farmers in the Nhill district were sometimes referred to as “Mallee Rooters”.

At first, the “stumps” as they are often called, were allowed to burn out after they were ripped from the ground by the chains and rollers. Or they were left in piles but these created a haven for rabbits until it was discovered the roots were not useless after all, but of intrinsic value.

They make strong, stable fires that give off a quiet, fierce and long-lasting heat, with no sparks, and burn to nothing. So they became income producing for many farmers, value adding to their clearing operations.

As the stumps were ploughed up, they were tossed onto trucks with most ending up in the open fires of Melbourne homes. And locally they were a preferred choice for campfires and in the early days they were used to fuel steam engines because they burned as hot as coal.

Mallee roots are uniquely self-stacking because of all the prongs. When tossed onto a truck they quickly form into an unmovable load to be offloaded to local woodheaps or onto rail wagons destined for Melbourne.

Nhill region stumps would be taken to the public weighbridge in Railway Street (Davis Avenue) just around the corner from Nelson Street and operated by H.E. Williams across the road. Road transports also took the Mallee roots to Melbourne as they were an ideal “backload” for trucks that had delivered goods to Nhill.

These days Mallee roots are also sold for use in the bonsai industry, to pet shops for use in aquariums, and can be turned into many other products such as trophies and corporate gifts. And clutch plates have been made from Mallee roots by bush mechanics.

Mallee root charcoal and nuggets are sold for BBQ’s and Mallee root dust is used in smokers.

The best burning wood in the world has also been a cigarette for many a young boy. Small porous stems provided a very rustic fag….but it was unfortunately very hot with the drawback not recommended.

There are Mallee root songs and Mallee root poetry and Mallee root tossing is a highlight of the Ouyen Mallee Root Festival. “The Root Fest”. Since it lost the “Vanilla Slice Triumph some years back the “Big Mallee Root Stump”, on display in a park, has been the town’s tourist drawcard.

Birchip has the Mallee Root Roundup and there’s a Mallee root wine in Western Australia. The Mallee root required the invention of the Stump Jump Plough, with many contenders giving demonstrations of their inventions on Nhill farms… but that’s another story.

Mallee Roots:

They spring from the soil just like mushrooms,
when the paddocks are ploughed every year.
Their source is one that seems endless, for they
never fail to appear,
I’ve stacked and burnt them by truckloads,
surely thousands of tons.
But with the rains and ploughing each season,
a new batch is ready to come.
They make a campfire that’s cheery when the
nights are frosty and cold,
embers red as the sunset, flames of flickering
gold.
They can burn through the night like a
beacon, till the ashes turn white in the dawn.
the four winds will scatter them widely, over
earth from where they were born.
I have cursed them profoundly each season; I
seem to be wasting my time,
they keep busting the bolts off my plough frame
and knocking the points off my tines.
I will best them one day I am certain, when
that will be I don’t know,

If I cannot do it above ground, perhaps I shall
from below.
I’ll haunt the plains of the mallee and all the
stumps that I pick
I’ll send them “special delivery” to the roaring
fires of “old Nick”.

John Hayes (Country Living)

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This article appeared in Nhill Free Press & Kaniva Times, 2 July 2025.