Herbert Forest Open Day 1 March 1986

As I'm remembering 31 March 1987 when the New Zealand Forest Service ceased to exist and arranging for a reunion of the Herbert crew, my neighbor Pat Gibson gave me some newspaper pages advertizing the 1 March 1986 Open Day. Pat is the wife of an old mate, the late Keith Gibson who was Sawyer/Manager of Bennett's [Herbert] sawmill. He strongly supported us guys who were made redundant on the closure of the forest.

I have been able to copy the photos from the Oamaru Mail, but the text could not be transferred onto this blog, so I will type it out because it shows what the organization NZFS was.
Also, the Oamaru Library are putting Oamaru Mail archive on to microfiche but they were not able to locate this copy so I will type it all out for posterity.
It should be noted that any time I have had material published in newspapers, there is something wrong - this is because you can't expect reporters to have a full understanding fully what we were about.

Herbert Forest Gate Sign

Herbert Forest Open Day

The New Zealand Forest Service as a government department, carries out a wide range of responsibilities on behalf of the government and on behalf of the people of New Zealand.
These responsibilities which are divided into trading and non-trading activities are set out in legislation known as the Forests & Rural Fires Act of 1949 and in a number of other acts.
Under the Forests Act, the Minister of Forests is given the responsibility of carrying out all matters of forest policy affecting State Forest land. In practice the Minister delegates most of the work involved to the Director General of Forests and his staff.

The Forests Act also states that the functions of the department, which are basically to control and manage all State Forest land consisting of both exotic and indigenous forest.
The forests may be grown for timber or other forest produce, or perhaps to stabilize land thus preventing soil erosion and protecting water catchment areas.
Other uses for State Forests are for recreation and educational purposes and to preserve specific areas for scientific study.

Control and management of exotic forests includes everything to do with trees from the buying of land to the tending and pruning of the trees, followed by the sale of the timber or the finished products.

In the case of indigenous forests it means greater emphasis on maintaining the forests, following the concepts of a sustained yield, i.e. ensuring that the number of growing trees are sufficient to replace those felled.

It is the responsibility of the department to safeguard the forests from fire and wild animals, and to carry out scientific studies and research into the prevention of tree diseases.
In addition, the New Zealand Forest Service helps develop new local and overseas markets for forest products, promotes the use of wood, ans services the timber industry. It also controls the import and export of forest products and is responsible for the control of forest diseases.

Historical Background.

The State Forest Service came into being in 1919. Previously the Department of Lands and Survey controlled all Crown-owned forests, supervised the selling of timber and had begun to plant some introduced tree species. Some forest areas were set aside as reserves, to preserve the vegetation in its natural state.
But this was not sufficient to satisfy some people who became alarmed at the rate natural forests were being cleared to make way for farms and provide timber for building.

The government of the day devised a policy to provide for future timber requirements by maintaining a timber 'bank' of fast growing exotic species. A new department, the State Forest Service was formed to put this policy into practice.

Later, the Forests Act (1921-22) envisaged that all Crown forest land valuable for timber, or to conserve soil and water, should become State Forest, but it was not until the new Act was passed in 1949 that this became legislation.

Since then amendments to the Act allow the changed name New Zealand Forest Service to:

• Provide forest parks.
• Declare areas to be set aside for specific purposes such as ecological or recreational reserves.
• Encourage public use of State Forests.
• Seek greater public involvement in how forests are managed.

Organization

The Director-General is the head of of the New Zealand Forest Service and is responsible to the Minister of Forests.
To help the Director-General carry out the many tasks connected with looking after many thousands of hectares of forests and forest lands there is a staff which possess a a variety of special skills.
As well as people trained in forestry and forestry science, NZFS employs many specialists. These include; architects, landscape planners, engineers, mechanics, surveyors. cartographers, draftsmen, economists, lawyers, accountants, technicians, clerks and others.
All of these people are attached to either a Conservancy or to Head office; Forestry research is carried out by scientists and technicians attached to the Forestry Research Institute.
The NZFS also has two demonstration sawmills, one at Waipa near Rotorua and one at Conical Hills in Southland.

Here I am measuring a P. radiata - dbh 76cm
Height 45m

Here I am with the Log Skidder

One of the ads supporting the Open Day
As it happened, I ended up working for Ford's

Forest Service has wide ranging responsibilities

Herbert Forest lying 25km Southwest of Oamaru, rises to 500m on the foothills of the Horse Range. Most of the forest is planted in exotics - predominantly Radiata pine, but included are small stands of Douglas fir, Larch and Corsican pine.
It also contains probably the only remnant virgin native forest in the area.
Forest establishment began in 1948 when planting in gorse infested former grazing land got under way.

Branch roads from State Highway 1 give easy access to the forest and its interesting walking tracks and picnic areas spots. Scenic drives through the forest overlook the North Otago coastline and the Central Otago ranges inland.
A feature of the forest is a network of walking tracks linked by roads crossing both native forest and exotic plantation. In the Herbert [North] Block, this circuit takes about seven hours to walk.
One section, Podocarp Track, has some fine stands of Podocarps with an unusual component of huge Pokaka trees. It takes about thirty minutes to walk the top loop of this track and about three hours for the whole track. Glenburnie loop, another segment takes about two hours.
Swallows walk is a one and a half loop track, so named for the stream junction resembling a swallow's tail. There is an interesting cave to explore on this walk. The third track in the circuit, Hood's Creek track, will take about three hours to walk. One of the highlights is a very attractive waterfall.
Near the North edge of the forest a short twenty minute walk leads to the neighboring Glencoe Domain, close to the Northern branch of the Waianakarua River.

A relatively recent addition to the Herbert Forest is the Trotters Gorge Block that encircles the Trotters Gorge Scenic Reserve.
The reserve is a delightful grassed picnic spot surrounded by native bush and bordedn one side by the Trotters Creek. There are two tracks in the Scenic Reserve - a bush track leads to the tops where a great view of the gorge is the reward. The other track is a Landrover track leading to the Trotters Gorge hut. This hut is the private property of the University of Otago to whom all booking for its use should be directed.

One of the most popular picnic and camping sites in the forest is the open grassed area planted in trees and shrubs near the forest headquarters. The facilities include a shelter, toilets and barbeque areas and it is only a short strol to the Waianakarua River which has safe swimming holes.

The development of walking tracks is changing the use of the forest, but hunting is still important. Introduced animals in the forest include red deer, wild pigs and opossum, with a few wild sheep.
Opossum hunters take precedence from May to September. Pig, red deer and wild sheep may be shot at other times. Permits are required for hunting and are available from the forest headquarters. Please note however, hunting is permitted only at weekends.

Itinerary Map

Forest Location Map

The NZFS ad - interesting imagery

Ad for the local store. now closed

Ad for Whirl-wide Helicopters - sadly, Murray had a fatal accident some time later.

Forest offers recreation

Herbert Forest is having an open day on Saturday, 1 March and the public are invited to come along and see a forest at work.
Herbert forest is adjacent to State Highway 1 some 95km North of Dunedin and 25 km South of Oamaru.

The 5500 hectare of Herbert Forest are managed by the New Zealand Forest Service under a multiple use policy. The main use of the exotic pine plantations is for timber production for both the domestic and export markets, while some native forest has been left on steep land areas to conserve soil and slow water runoff.
Many areas of the forest, both native and exotic are available for recreational purposes with several walking tracks and picnic areas provided.

The aim if the open day is to enable the public to meet some of the many aspects of forestry. At the forest headquarters there will be displays illustrating tree seeding production, growing trees on the farm, treatment and the use of timber, environmental protection of the forest and fire protection and control. Sophisticated fire equipment will also be on display and there will be an hourly helicopter fire-fighting display.

A free bus tour will be operating in the forest throughout the day. Buses will be operating as a shuttle service, with buses departing all stops every ten minutes. The tour will take about three hours and involves four stops at which the public will have a chance to see pruning and thinning, post cutting and peeling, skidder logging, as well as having the opportunity to take a short guided bush walk. As part of the bus tour there will be a tree height guessing competition with a prize awarded to the winner.

Barbeque and picnic facilities will be available at the NZFS headquarters adjacent to the carpark.

Maheno Tavern ad - classic

The Mill House was in its heyday at this time!



Our local garage put in an ad, as did a plant and pets shop in Oamaru - now closed


GT Gillies are no more but a service station uses the Gillies name.
When we had new vehicles these people serviced them.

Old Photo Album cont.

The Forest HQ area taken in the late '70's from the hill opposite. The yellow gorse area in the foothills is part of Bert Moir's farm and as it was a fire hazard, so we regularly burnt it for him. Later we purchased most of the area from him.
The 4 Bay garage dominates the site - there are pics of its construction.

Loading thinnings from Cpt 4. Waitaki Transport were the carriers and Lewis Hore was the contractor.
Skippy was the usual Waitaki Transport driver and he began carting the first posts out of the forest for McCullum & Co, loading them by hand!

Logs from Cpt 13 bound for Waimate. Jim Bisett owned the mill and we had to be on our toes to make sure the correct credits came through before to logs left the forest.

The Manatu Block, Trotters Gorge was purchased from Errol George who had been a helicopter pilot and carried out aerial spraying contracts on the forest.
His house was opposite Katiki beach and he told me that once he was nearly electrocuted when he pulled in synthetic electric fence wire, and when it let go, flew into the overhead wires!
This area was notorious for holes in the ground with bottle shaped cavities underneath, very dangerous to fall into!

Radiata pine in Cpt 21 struggled through the gorse. Middle Ridge is to the right and down on the left, Queen's Road can be seen.
In the background to the right is Mt. Charles.
North Otago looks dry at the time!

Murray McMillan takes off on a spraying mission.
We used to keep accurate records, especially about the weather to study the effect of chemicals on the target weeds in differing conditions.

The Forest HQ office as it was when I arrived, April 1965.
My Commer Cob parked there carried my gear, dogs and a good few dead pigs back in the day!

Vehicles used back in the day!
1140, the old K Bedford gang truck.
3624, A2 Bedford with a removable canopy [dog box] sometimes used for gang transport but usually it was an admin vehicle.

Salvage logging - Robin May. Part of Cpt 39.
By this time log sales were more reliable and most of these logs went for export.






Lewis Hore with his skidder on the side of Middle Ridge Road. he was thinning the Douglas fir on the opposite side of the road. They were nice small logs.

From the Manatu Block looking North to South Peak. There is now a 'tuft' of trees on top of South Peak because when we asked for submissions from the public on how we should manage the area, one person requested that the top of South Peak should not be planted. Peter Kennedy planted trees in his initials as a joke - perhaps expecting them to be pulled out. They never were and we received no complaint.

From the top of the Beehive Bluff looking South to Moeraki.








A very young forest [North Block] circa 1965. Mt. Misery is visible left of center and right of center is the Devil's Elbow.
The mature stand toward the foreground are private stands.






Waitaki Transport carried a lot of the road metal - on the South Block we had our own pit of schist rock. It was applied fairly heavily and from time to time mishaps occur.
This truck was too close to the edge and its load shifted. There was always heavy machinery to pull the truck back onto the road.

Land preparation was easier after salvage logging in Cpt 20. The area was windrowed using a bulldozer. These days windrowing is more effectively done using diggers, which seem to be able to sit on very steep areas.

Herbert Forest Reunion

This year on 31 March is the 25th anniversary of the demise of the New Zealand Forest Service. This was due to a government policy of changing the structure of many government departments into corporate type enterprises, many became State Owned Enterprises.

There were pluses and minuses to this process and to some extent it caused social changes that are still felt today.

So it turned out that most of the Herbert Forest staff found themselves out of a job come 31 March 1987. There is no easy way through this type of thing and people were forced to redirect their lives.

As for the forest, it became an SOE under the banner of Timberlands Ltd. and they were required to post a return to government. The Herbert Forest people of course were watchful and critical of how the forest was managed, especially regarding early clearfelling and replanting with low stock numbers. Locally it was perceived to be our forest because it was our effort that made it what it was.

When the next change occurred, I was overseas and so did not witness what occurred but it seemed the Timberlands model was not working well maybe because the transition from government department to corporate was too much of a leap for some to get their head around.
As a Maori claim settlement, Herbert Forest was handed to the local tribe, Nai Tahu who sold it on to the American company, Blakely Pacific.
It is difficult to explain Maori claims or to compensate for past wrongs and I am no expert on such matters. But it is true that the original land buyer forged Maori sale agreement and pocketed money he was supposed to hand over- and I think government believed the money was handed over. I'm glad it is not my job to sort that one out after some 150 years!

Blakely Pacific have a good reputation and locally they are proving to be good corporate citizens and the eagle eyes of the ex-forest workers agree that their husbandry of the forest is very good. Locally there is general belief that the forest is now in good hands.

Over the years expressions of interest were put to me regarding a reunion of the old Herbert Forest people and it seemed appropriate to me, to hold a gathering on the 25th anniversary of the demise of the New Zealand Forest Service.
So between some of us, it has been decided to hold the gathering a the old forest HQ site in what was the wet weather shelter on 25th February from around 11:00am.
I asked Blakely Pacific for permission to tour the forest and my contact, Barry Wells came with an old photo album and offered to meet the cost of catering and a bus tour through the forest, saying that it is Blakely Pacific's pleasure to support an event honoring the legacy that they are now managing.
I appreciate this offer and those words.

I do not have a lot of photos from those old days but below are some from the album Barry loaned me:

Very early on - Bert Moir, --, Herb Welsh, Laurie Hore, Artie Bennett, --, Gib Green.
Probably at smoko time.






I only know Artie Bennett on the left, Gib Green in front and Bert Moir on the right. The old 'lemon squeezer' hat at the rear is ex-army. It is likely this photo is around 1950.






Erection of the 4 Bay Garage - built from large gauge Rimu timber and very sturdy.








G.T. Gillies were famous in Oamaru as a local engineering firm and a local car garage/service station. Old George Gillies purchased many GMC vehicles ex-war and sold off parts and refurbished vehicles.
They had also this GMC with a crane that was hired to lift the trusses and walls of the 4 Bay Garage into place.




Albert Stringer tops a newly erected scrub fence. It was very difficult to establish amenity plantings at the HQ site because of a lack of water so to mitigate this we provided shelter from the SW winds that tended to dry out the soils. It was an effective way of protecting young plants.
The scrub was Manuka and Kanuka from the forest.



A more recent portrait of Albert Hugh Stringer, long time office clerk and gardener at Herbert Forest.









The Beehive Bluffs before they were covered with vegetation. The area on top was planted in all sorts of other species - as a park and to take advantage of the views. We were required to spend 2% of our vote on amenities in those days but this was not really an appropriate thing to do with today's values in mind.
On the skyline the trees are Kanuka.



Controlled burn on Diamond Hill. This was part of a trial to what spray regime was most effective on gorse and the seedling response after burning.
This was a good back burn that left a clean planting site.





A controlled burn below Road 19. Again a slow back burn across the face made a nice clean planting site.
This area was burn much earlier by one of the controlled burns that became uncontrolled and while we fought it, it burnt itself out when it could not cross the next gulley because of the native bush that acted as a firebreak.




A portrait of the one and only Colin Bartrum. He did not like photos being taken of him and it is a victory that I have this!
Colin was a Leading Hand on the forest.









Robin May, contractor harvesting export logs from Cpt 13.
I oversaw the implementation of harvesting on the forest, drawing up the logging plans for several years ahead.
Stephen Gibson was the first to be awarded a contract but later lost it to Robin May, which was one of the fights that I had to concede.





Cpt 24 with Queens Road to the right. This was to be my first controlled burn and quite a tricky one too because it was completely surrounded by forest.
It went well but I did have concerns when the fire rushed uphill toward the road - lesson learned; fire races uphill but does not burn cleanly. But it does lose its power at the top - a good place to fight it from.


Windthrow damage after the 1980 Southwest gales. To try and understand the dynamics of windthrow, a plane was hired and I took oblique photos. This meant we had to take the door off the plane - all the way from Hilderthorpe! I was wrapped in my Swandri, but it was a freezing trip!




Cpt 41 windthrow damage after the 1975 NW gales. This photo is taken from the boundary with Tom Coleman's farm. He called it Tuscon Valley.
The trees were tall and pruned to 32' with thin spacing. I stood by them as they smashed like matchsticks that night, Aug 1.
A warm, moonlit night.



Cpt 54 windthrow after the SW storm of 16.3.80. District Ranger Jack Barber on the left and OiC Alf Milligan on the right.
After thinning the stand is vulnerable to powerful winds.
The track is actually the one that went into the mine office/hut on Diamond Hill. Mick Hill used it when he had a permit to cut Manuka firewood on the point overlooking the Larch (now logged).



Dorothy, the old Galleon grader was purchased by Waitaki Transport.
Bert Moir drove this machine to maintain the forest roads and on various construction jobs.
She came back to the forest when Waitaki Transport won a contract to lay gravel on some of the roads.



The CRU was the 'Central Roading Unit' based at Conical Hills, where where was a large NZFS workshop. We used to call them the 'Roading Gang' but that term became unpopular when motorcycle gangs made the word 'gang' to become associated with unlawful elements.
These guys travelled up on a Monday and back on a Friday which made me question the efficiency of the expensive machinery.


The annual Forestry/Sawmill cricket match, February 1979.
Alf looks to be holding - handing over the trophy which means we lost. The margin would have been small :p
Always a good picnic day out and social gathering.








Couches Road from Breakneck Road. Looking at Cpt 24. The macrocarpas on the ridge were felled, but had been a hedge around Nat Stephenson's house. These trees had been markers for Moeraki fishermen.





Hat Day! Denis Moody, Lester Robb, Darryl Wright, Ian (Kakanui) Beck, Len Capill, Phil (Snow) Wilkie, Phil (Bert) Thompson, Mel Jamieson, Alf Milligan.
In front - Nick Nicholidis, Dave Caldwell.






I will post this blog now because there are a lot of photos and will continue.....

A Gold Mine at Trotters Gorge

During the Great Depression, the government paid men to prospect for gold in the hope something might eventuate from a find. There were workable deposits at Livingston and of course there is the big mine now operating across the ridge operated by Oceana Gold at Macraes.

I knew the creeks running from catchments within the forest were prospected - all along to lower Kakanui Range really. Not much was found though some guys were suspected of making money from some creeks. Of course I had a little fossic in some of the creeks and found some shiny dust, but not any gold.

Sometimes when the scrub or fern is burnt well in preparation for planting, the land is revealed as it has not been for years. This also happens when a forest matures and the trees cause other vegetation to die off through a lack of sunlight.
On the Trotters Gorge Block, the controlled burn of Compartment 73 was particularly clean and it revealed a small small gold mine. Water races, holding reservoir, sluiced areas and some mining equipment.
I asked around but found nobody who knew of this enterprise and so cannot report on the success - but the pictures tell as much as I know.

Viewed from above the reservoir looks small - in the center of the photo. Else, the very clean burn.








The reservoir with Colin standing in shows that it must have held a lot of water.
The bluffs are limestone, the same as the gorge.







Inside the reservoir showing the edge of it and the work involver in its construction.








The water race seems to end in this gulley, and a track continues on the same contour, so maybe the race was never completed.








Colin standing in one of the water races, showing that they must have carried a good volume of water.











In several laces the race is formed with considerable rock works.












A Kowhai tree growing in the race shows the age of the workings.












The race and areas where sluicing took place.









Another of the sluiced areas.









A mineshaft on the ridge.









Colin standing in one of the mineshafts








Miner's cradle left in the small rock shelter.












The gold pan we found in the rock shelter. All was left the as it was for someone else to enjoy finding.