Originally published in the Dandenong Journal from 10 March to 22nd September, 1932.
This copy is taken from the original published then, not the book version now used by others.
Even in those early days Dandenong was famed for its red gum timber and thousands (I might say millions) of feet were taken out by sawyers for works in Melbourne, especially for planking the wharves. There was very little money in the labor of timber-getting, but it entailed any amount of hard work. Up before daybreak, breakfast by candle light often, and away to the bush to pick a tree. That being done, the work of felling it began. When the crash came, the limbs were lopped off, and, if a saw pit were handy, a team of bullocks hauled the log there. If a pit were not handy, then one was dug close by, and the sawyers, top and bottom, were soon at it like slaves sawing it into requisite lengths.
“For sheet-piling the Wharves, planking of dimensions 9in. x 2iu. x 27ft. was needed, the price obtained, being 12/ per 100 super feet delivered. Of this sum the bullock driver received half, his job being to haul the logs to the sawpits, and cart them when sawn to the city. The other half went to the sawyers, and I do not think that anyone to-day will say that they did not earn it, or that they were over paid.
“Those were the days when men (and boys and women, too) worked hard, for there was no eight hours’ work, eight hours’ sleep, and eight hours’recreation. At daylight every one who was able was hard at work, and until it was too dark to see to strike a blow the axe could be heard ringing among, the trees, and the saw humming in the pit. I have seen sawyers working by lantern light up till 11 o’clock at night, filling an order, and the same men hard at it again at daybreak next morning—iron men in every sense of the word.
“The gum country went back to wards Melbourne for a considerable distance, but the best trees were felled in and around Dandenong; and it will be within the memory of young men (comparatively speaking) the stripping of “Grassmere,” and further out, and later, “Hampton Park,” at the intersection of Cranbourne and Pound roads, most of this timber being sawn into blocks for the streets of Melbourne, and suburbs."
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