From little things, big things grow

A day trip to see where the trees grew that built Maiwar.

Last week I was lucky enough to visit the Hoop Pine plantations where the trees grew that made the plywood I used to build Maiwar.

The plantation is situated about 2 hours North West of Brisbane, just outside the town of Blackbutt. The forests are owned and run by HQ Plantations. Their kind staff invited me, as well as the owner of Austral Plywoods, on a tour of their operations.

To be able to experience the journey from tree, to plywood, to boat was a fantastic experience.

In the morning I arrived at the Blackbutt office, where I was greeted by some of the staff. We gathered round to have morning tea, where I was subjected to an informal Q&A. I’d like to think I learnt as much about plantation forests as the team did about ocean rowing.

Next we set off in four wheel drive to visit some of the forests. We began by checking out a recently cleared lot. Contractors clear about 70ha at a time. This lot had recently been felled and was to be replanted in the next financial year.

Next we headed down the valley to a mature plantation. I learnt that hoop pine, unlike most plantation species here in Queensland, likes to grow on hilly terrain. The mature plantations were between 50 and 60 years old. This planation, I was told, is the cream of the crop. Most of the trees will go into Austral plywood. Stuart from Austral only accepts the highest quality trees, for this they need to be large, straight, and free of branches. The trees we saw were trimmed up to 6 meters, meaning that one would get 6 meter lengths of knot free timber.

The mature trees were actually smaller than I thought, having a diameter of about 400mm. Traditionally they were planted in straight rows, but nowadays they are planted along contour lines.

Next was onto the newly planted lot. Here the baby Hoop Pines had recently left the nursery and had been planted. While we were standing by the road, looking down the gully. One of the older blokes pointed to a recently felled lot. “That’s were the trees came from to build your boat Tom’.

Now isn’t that wonderful!!

The whole experience was informative, educational and enjoyable, it filled me with confidence for the future of plantation timber in Australia.