Timber Tramways of the Toolangi and Castella Forests

The Crowley/Granton and Dindi Tramway

The first major tramway extension into the Toolangi forests was done by Crowley, who by 1904 was also being inundated by requests from tourists to travel on his tramway from Healesville up to the Myers Creek Falls19. The first extension, built between 1900 and 190420, went from his Myers Creek mill up to Johnston Creek, i.e. to the general area of ‘McIntosh’s Selection’ on the Yea River, previously explored for palings in the early 1880s and was also accompanied by an extension to a second mill on Coles Creek21.

To service the tramway, a set of stables was established half-way between each of the mills at Toolangi and Myers Creek. Three and four horse teams were used on both sections of the tramline; on the descent from what is now ‘Cones Landing’ on the Myers Creek Road and down to Healesville, the tramway trucks travelled by gravity alone, with the horses following behind either on the tramway or an adjacent road22 until they reached the river flats, at which point the horses would be reattached for the final journey to the railway station.

Braking on the steep descent was managed by men riding the trucks to operate the brakes as required. Once the load was delivered at the station, the horses would bring the wagons back up the tramline to the mills.

The most significant timber enterprise ever to operate in the Toolangi/Castella forest, and also the most significant one to operate a very extensive tramway, was that of the Granton Sawmills and Timber Seasoning Ltd, a business of Sydney-based investors led by C.R. Ferguson. The name reflects the original parish on which the main Granton mill was located23. This tramway was not only the first to be built, and ultimately the most extensive, but it also featured the last known section of tramway ever constructed in the Toolangi forests in April 1942.

The origins of this tramway can be traced directly back to Thomas Crowley and the Healesville Sawmill Company, who built the original tramway to service the Coles Creek mill in Toolangi and the Myers Creek mill. Although the tramway was no longer serviceable by 1912, it had connected right through to the railway station at Healesville.

The Granton company, using a survey plan provided by the Healesville Shire Engineer J.T. Noble Anderson, rebuilt Crowley’s tramline but with some improvements, including some alignment adjustments and light steel rails (rather than timber ones) on the curves and road crossings. The line reached the Healesville Railway Station in 1914. In 1916 the Granton Company obtained permission to enter the railway land itself, so that timber could be directly transferred from the mill-owned tramway trucks onto the waiting goods wagons of the Victorian Railways.

The plan was to operate two mills, one on Myers Creek about 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) above the Myers Creek Falls (the so-called ‘No.1 Mill’), and another larger one (the ‘No.2 Mill’) at Roberts Spur in the heart of the Toolangi forest, a quite significant 14 miles (22.5 kilometres) north of Healesville24. This mill at Roberts Spur was to become the very well- known ‘Granton’ or ‘No.2’ mill. An associated seasoning and tongue and grove plant was later constructed in Healesville itself (in 1922), on Don Road adjacent to the Graceburn, and on what is now the site of the Maroondah Retirement Village25.

The Granton Mill alone initially had a capacity of up to 8,00026 super feet of timber a day. A ‘super foot’ is a unit of measurement by which the volume of timber can be measured. A ‘super foot’ of timber is equivalent to a board 12″ x 1″ x 12″, i.e. approximately 305mm long and 305mm wide, by 25.4mm thick or 0.00236 cubic meters27 in metric terms.

To service the Granton No.2 Mill, and also considering that daily visits to and from the mill by employees living elsewhere was impossible due to its remote isolation, a settlement grew adjacent to the new mill, at which lived the employees and their families, including some contractors to the mill. A range of associated buildings were also constructed, including a recreation hall28. Between 1921 and 1927 there was even a school which operated part time, sharing a teacher with Toolangi State School29. The importance of the timber tramway to this mill in particular, and to its later constructed sister mill ‘the Dindi’, cannot be overstated; both mills were deep in the forest and hence the tramway became the lifeline, not only for timber products leaving the mills bound for the rail head at Healesville, but also for the people who worked and lived at ‘the Granton’ and later at ‘the Dindi’.

As a clear indication that transport of timber of the tramway remained a slow business, despite all of the investment, it still took two days for a load of timber to be carefully taken by the tramway to Healesville, and then for the tram crew to complete the return trip back to the Granton Mill30. Stables at Coles Creek and near the No.1 Mill in Myers Creek provided facilities along the way, along with accommodation for the crew and horses.

In 1918 the tramline from the Granton was extended north-east towards Kalatha Creek, so that access could be gained to new reserves of timber. After a bushfire in 1920, the newly formed Forests Commission directed the Granton Company to salvage the fire-killed timber in the Yellowdindi Creek area. As a result of this, a further new mill had to be built, soon to be widely known as the ‘Dindi Mill’. This required a further extension of the tramway which went across Kalatha Creek, then north and east over the Woodmore Range to the Murrindindi River itself, before going up a valley where a permanent source of spring water finally decided the location of the new mill31.

All equipment for the Dindi Mill was brought in on the newly laid company tramline. On one occasion, the mill boiler, along with some supplies, proved too much for the Kalatha Creek bridge, which apparently weakened by heavy rain, collapsed under the heavy load. As a result, five horses, twelve men and the entire load fell 25 feet (7.62 metres) down into the creek, but very fortunately there were no serious injuries32. Shortly afterwards, one of the men with a clearly dry wit reported that a ‘butter dish’ destined for the boarding house had however, somehow been broken in the incident! Once the Dindi Mill started operating, the Granton No.2 Mill was closed down for some time, however the new Dindi Mill and the original No.1 Mill in Myers Creek combined had a substantial capacity of up to 20,000 super feet per day.

In Timber Mountain: A Sawmilling History of the Murrindindi Forest, Norman Houghton reports that by 1921 the Granton tramline alone was a substantial 22 miles (35.4 kilometres) long, but this didn’t include the various logging spurs which ran off the track to gain access to assorted stands of timber on the route. It must have been a truly remarkable sight and photographs taken at the time likely only give a glimpse of what was a truly remarkable piece of engineering in very tough terrain. By this time, a telephone line also ran alongside the track, connecting the mill to Healesville.

In 1921 other millers sought to negotiate access to the Granton tramline. The first of these was Dennis and Smedley whose mill was based at Coles Creek. As a result of the increased traffic on the line, further improvements had to be made and they included four passing loops. Timetabling allowed for all trips in the mornings to be for travelling from the various stables towards the Granton Mill or else towards the Healesville Railway Station, with the afternoons being reserved for trips away from the railway station and away from the mills33.

Typical loads in busy periods around 1921 would consist of eight bogie loads of 2,500 super feet each. The company required a total of sixty horses to cater for the job, with ten resting at any one time in the stables at Myers Creek34.

Transport to and from the Dindi Mill was either by foot, horseback or on the tramway. Houghton says that a solo, one-way trip by horseback from Healesville to the mill would take three hours using the tramway route, but around 1925 the mill manager Clement Morath constructed a car-like, four-wheeled, iron-framed motor trolley, using a Harley Davidson motorcycle engine. This enabled him to traverse the distance in about an hour, as long as the rails were not slippery from rain or snow. A fantastic photo of the mill manager’s car and the mill crew appears on page 36 of Houghton’s Timber Mountain, but it’s uncertain whether the photo depicts the original vehicle or a later replacement.

When the seasoning plant was finally constructed in Don Road, Healesville in 1922, yet another extension of the tramline was made along St. Leonards Road to the plant35.

Severe bushfires affected the area in 1926, as a result of which large sections of the Granton/Dindi tramway were damaged or destroyed. This included destruction of the Coles Creek bridge, along with bridges over Boiler Creek, Jim Creek and Morganer Creek, and the damage was severe enough to force closure of the Dindi Mill. The company tried to keep operations going from the Granton site, but eventually it was impossible, and all of the employees were ‘thrown out of work’36. Fortunately, by April-May 1926 the burned bridges and tramway assets were rebuilt, as a result of which the company restarted operations.

However the road ahead proved to be very difficult for a host of reasons, including industrial relations issues and a four-month strike by workers37.

By 1931 the Healesville Shire had built an all-weather road connecting Healesville and Toolangi via Chum Creek. The Granton Company realised the new Chum Creek route offered a better option to transport timber using ever improving road vehicles, rather than persisting with the tramway down the Myers Creek valley. Approval was sought and given by the Healesville Council for the company to use the new Chum Creek road. A chain block and gantry was then erected on the tramway 8 miles (12.87 kilometres) from Healesville, where loads were transferred from the tramway to road transport trucks. After this, a combination of methods was used, both road transport and tramline, often depending on the weather and road conditions, as on some occasions the Council would refuse access to the road due to damage being caused by the log trucks38.

Over the ensuing few years, the preference for road transport became apparent, end eventually in 1934 the company abandoned 8 miles (12.87 kilometres) of the tramway altogether39; this appears to have been the section between what is now called ‘Cones Landing’ (see below) and Healesville. The era of bush tramways in the Toolangi/Castella forest was slowly drawing to an end.

In March of the same year, W.C. Cone & Co, sawmillers formerly from Noojee, acquired the assets and timber rights of the Granton Company, then immediately began discussions with the Healesville Shire Council about further work on the Myers Creek Road, on the basis that

W.C. Cone & Co made a financial contribution towards the costs of doing so. The Council agreed40, the work was completed and so road transport on the final leg to Healesville via Myers Creek also became well established.

The landing on the Granton/Dindi tramway at the base of Mount St Leonard was subsequently renamed ‘Cones Landing’, a name the location still has today. After World War Two, the area was also incorporated into the Potato Research Station and the large metal barn on the site also retains to this day the name of ‘Cones Barn’41.

The Cones family, Bill and son Ken, brought further modernisation to the tramway and to operations overall. This included the introduction of two ‘rail tractors’ to operate on the tramway between Cones Landing and the mills and log harvesting areas. The logging systems themselves were also modernised away from the traditional ‘snigging’ operation using horses or bullocks, and eventually a type of ‘high lead’ system42 involving the use of suspended cables to drag logs from the forest was also introduced43.

In 1936 the Granton No.2 mill was finally closed and the Dindi Mill, which had apparently been lying idle for some time, was rebuilt to what Houghton describes as ‘the most modern standards’44.

Of the large workforce employed at this time, around seven or eight workers were employed solely on the tramline between the Dindi Mill and Cones Landing. The tramline was significantly rebuilt at this time by Jim Wollin, including a number of the bridges. A tractor garage for the rail tractors was also constructed at Cones Landing. The first rail tractor was a six-wheel ‘Day’ type driven by a McCormack Deering engine. The second was a Fordson tractor powered unit45. Driver Syd Edwards and brakemen Eric Wollin and Wattie Chandler were located at the landing46.

Despite the modern improvements with the rail tractors, which included being able to use them at night after they were fitted with headlights, it was still not plain sailing, as the risks of such a system carrying very heavy loads of timber in mountainous and heavily forested terrain remained real. Over the years there certainly had been serious accidents and deaths on some of the horse-drawn tramways in the area,47 including at least one death of a Marchbank/Knott employee on the Granton Company tramline. This came about because the two businesses had shared running on the line since 1921 via a spur line connecting to the Granton Company line from the Marchbank/Knott Mill at Luke Creek48. That accident occurred in 1925 when a loaded bogie descending towards Healesville jumped the track near ‘the Cascades’ in Myers Creek and crushed the employee49.

According to Houghton, the steeper sections of the line were the main problem, particularly near Coles Creek. In this location post 1934, three truck arrangements (standard for the time) would have one truck removed and separately taken to the top of the next rise, before the rail tractor would come back and then take the other two trucks. Apparently, it was just too dangerous to try and take a combined three-truck load over this section of the track, even with a rail tractor in charge. When it snowed or if there was ice on the track, the brakeman would also often be required to walk ahead clearing the rails with hand tools and this must have made progress on those days painfully slow50.

The catastrophic fires of 1939 caused yet more damage to the Granton/Dindi tramline, and to the Dindi Mill itself to some extent, but according to Houghton, neither were apparently of any great concern to the Cones family, simply because the fires had resulted in the need to salvage massive areas of fire-killed timber in the Mount St Leonard and Mount Tanglefoot areas51, relatively close to the Dindi Mill, which ended up operating day and night to keep up with the demand.

In response to the massive recovery operation, the Forests Commission constructed a large camp at Kalatha to house its personnel and a range of other workers, but perhaps more relevant to the fate of the timber tramways, the Forests Commission also arranged for the salvaged timber to be removed exclusively by road transport to the Healesville Railway Station. Logging roads were also extended into various areas of the forest as needed, but as no suitable roads yet reached the Dindi Mill itself, the tramline in that area was repaired after the 1939 fires.

In April 1942 a brand-new section of tramline was also constructed north of the Dindi Mill to an additional mill plant on the Murrindindi River. This small tramline operated until 1944, when it was finally abandoned52. It appears this was the last section of tramline ever constructed in the Toolangi/Castella forests, but it was not the last to be operated – that line was the one in Spraggs Road Toolangi, servicing Evans’ Mill53.

The Cones family subsequently took up a new timber lease at Club Terrace in East Gippsland in 1951, at which point their operations in the Toolangi and Healesville areas were closed54.