During Logan's time (1823) ".... The sawyer's station at Oxley Creek was a rudimentary affair, with one slab building for the overseer and two slab buildings for the sawyers. ..... at Cooper Plains there was one slab residence for the soldiers and another for convicts....." (Johnston, 1988)

"Proceeded with Captain Logan and Mr Cunningham up the Brisbane River to Limestone Station [Ipswich], on the banks of the Bremer, which we reached at sunset, after having rowed for eleven hours.

Captain Patrick Logan

The south side of the Brisbane, as far as Canoe Creek, is covered with forests of Pine or Araucaria, to a considerable extent. The north bank, as far as Glenmoriston's Range, is principally open forest, not reaching far, beyond which it is clothed with pine brushes, as on the south.
These forests contain immense quantities of Yellow Wood, (Oxleya xanthoxyla) and Tulip Wood (Harpullia pendula), with Figs of five or six different species, Grevillea venusta Br. (Silk Oak of the pine cutters) and a great profusion of magnificent trees. Beyond Canoe Creek, the pine partially disappears from both sides of the river, and its geographical situation is occupied by enormous Figs....."
(J.G. Steele, 1972)
Charles Fraser, Colonial Botanist 1828 Fraser accompanied Allan Cunningham to Brisbane Town in July 1828. Here they were joined in their explorations by Patrick Logan.

Sawpits

" ... In 1826 the Sydney authorities issued instructions about the cutting of timber; for example, evergreens were to be cut only between May and August. Parties of timber-cutters fanned out into the bush, especially in the Oxley (Canoe) Creek area.
Saw-pits were established and some of the timber cut into planks. A variety of timbers was cut, but mainly pine and cedar. Sydney began regularly to order logs and spars from the area; these were generally rafted down the river and over to Dunwich (Green Point) on Stradbroke Island for loading to Sydney.... "
(Johnston, 1988)

Laheys' Timber Mill

First timber sent to Sydney, c 1915 (Lahey Family Collection)

(1920 John Oxley Library)

(Pre 1920 John Oxley Library)

George Sirett's Bullock Team

George Sirett, a second generation bullocky, now in his 70s, remembers cutting timber along the upper reaches of Oxley Creek:
"I wanted a big tree to cut timber out of to build a bullock wagon and I knew where there was a big blue gum on Oxley Creek. I went out one day and I took my bullocks out and felled him with a chainsaw and dragged him out where I could load him onto my truck and then carted him down to the mill at Logan village and he sawed it.
I gave him a list of the pieces I wanted cut out of it and he cut them out and I brought them home and started to rebuild my bullock wagon and that took me about 2 years in all as I was working as well. It turned out a pretty good wagon.
He was a really big log like 140" (355 cm) around the girth - I wanted a big mature tree so it wouldn't shrink or anything on me and blue gum is noted for that - once it's dried it won't shrink anymore whereas ironbark will.

George Sirett

That's why you use it for wheels to put your tyres on because it won't shrink and your tyres (steel) won't come loose. They'll stay tight for years as long as you use the right timber.

There was lot of other blue gum around but this was one of the biggest in there. It was all sort of scrubby in there and you had to brush a track in for one log. There was also a lot of ironbark and tallowwood and different timbers like that and it was thick.
I know where there is one still out there but he was too big. He must be a couple of hundred years old he was an enormous tree, I reckon he would be 14 or 15 feet (4.25 - 4.5m approx) straight across the stump if you could cut him down - to my knowledge he's still standing there and he's about 80 feet (24m approx) easy to the first limb."

George's bullocks moving a big Iron Bark, early 1960s, 'Spot' in the middle

Les Wilson worked the upper reaches of Oxley Creek and continued the family timbergetting business started by his great-grandfather. His grandfather, George Benjamin, was a noted axeman. Les recalls:

".... There's one tree up there on the Teviot that's quite a few feet across the stump and it belonged to the O'Neills .... There'd been a local bet of Five Pounds which was a lot of money in those days - if anyone could come and chop that tree down from daylight to dark they could have the tree and Five Pounds as well.
Grandfather had taken that one up and made his Five Pounds out of that. He learnt the broadaxe work and all that sort of thing as well, dressed piles and girders.

He felled locally, although he did a little bit of felling in other areas as well. He did a bit of fencing for a lot of the old timers like the Barnes's and the Brennan family and they got that way on the poles, as Dad came along he and his father used to work together cutting on poles, and they'd do a 50-foot pole a day, broadaxe dressing them you know. These were electricity poles ......

....The log timbers in the very early days, they were bullocking it from here to Jimboomba, loading it on the rail and it went by rail to Brisbane - extremely early days some was taken down the Logan River and back up the Brisbane River by a boat system .....

...There were some trees too big to put on the teams and they left one or two logs laying .... on the Gum Flat.... But they were using two or three bullock loads, sometimes more, wagon loads to a tree some of the big blue gums. They were monstrous stumps.
There's still one on the creek just behind us - 22 foot girth ... on the tree. The tree's still there - lightning struck it about two or three years ago. I was going to cut it but I thought, aw, it'd squash my little truck. I'm only a 25-tonner, so it'd squash it, so I left it to stand there. .
....The vertical type saws that they had in the old-type mills were a very slow cutter but because of the dimension of the situation, you could put a very big log through it and as a result that kind of timber could be handled in yesteryear where its with the modern sawmill, probably one of the biggest and most efficient in South Queensland, Krugers - they certainly couldn't handle it and the other smaller mills - well the little mill I've got there now couldn't handle it.

We bought country on the Teviot up there which we've still got to this day ... big paddock up there, and our cousins, Saville family, they have a couple of thousand acres or so of good timber alongside, and they started cutting that and Dad started hauling that out for them.
They bullock-teamed a lot of that in the very early days and then gave it up - a big mountain range through it, and it had never ever been touched - and so we pulled that out for them, all the mountain and a lot of rough country and that.

...They were all private dairy farms or whatever. Some of the old dairies we took timber out down Paradise Road, did a lot of Spotted Gum there.
Particularly in more recent years we've stuck to our own country and not worried about anywhere else.....
... There is a couple of fairly large paddocks here, they've got subdivision plan designs done.... So that's the new trend in the district - the subdivision, something that wasn't here before."

"As to timber from the area - a tremendous lot went to Queensland Timbers from around here. Laheys' at Corinda took quite a bit. Peter's Slip took speciality logs. They'd want a big huge log that they could cut an engine bed for a ship out of or something like that and you'd get a special order.... maybe a lot of piles up and down the Brisbane River or part of a wharf or bridge construction. I know we did a lot of replacement piles for the Commonwealth Flour Mill there.' (Les Wilson)

References:
W. Ross Johnston (1988), Brisbane: first thirty years.
Interview by Ron Tooth with George Sirett, February 1998
Interview by Jeanine Herbert with Les Wilson on 1 September 1988.
J.G. Steele, 1972, The Explorers of the Moreton Bay District 1770-1830, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland.

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