McAdam Assessment Tasks at May 1944

UNIT

2/1 Aust Command Royal Engineers (Forestry) 2/1 Aust Forestry Coy

Strength – established

23

165

2/2 Aust Forestry Coy 165

2/3 Aust Forestry Coy 165 1 Aust CRE (New Guinea Forests) 38 1 Aust Forest Survey Coy 127 2 Aust Forest Survey Coy 127 The ensuing structure to meet the requirements of the July 1943 plan is reflected in the Table above describing the Royal Australian Engineers Forestry Units as of 5 May 1944. Source War Diaries: AWM 52 5/32/7.

McAdam Assessment Tasks at May 1944

McAdam was tasked with:

• organising a survey of possible harvesting areas. • assemble all information pertinent to the timber resource and milling of such timbers. • advice on sawmill equipment and supervision of all Australian sawmill personnel. • maintain records of the quantities of timber milled by Australian and USA forces. • The Australian command had difficulty with USA forces. They were suspicious that such data would be the basis for a claim against the USA. • McAdam deserves credit for insisting that all timbers harvested be recorded for

eventual recompense to be made to the native owners for use of their trees. This became part of official Australian orders.

• In a paper presented to the Fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History16 by

Judith A. Bennett, Department of History, University of Otago, New Zealand titled

“Allied logging and milling in Papua New Guinea during World War 11 describes in some detail following the war, the compensation program undertaken by McAdam and his officers between 1947 and 1960, paying customary owners for the timbers harvested during the war.

The major tasks were the location of supplies of timber for immediate operational requirements of the various war services, and an assessment of the forest resources of the south-west Pacific Area, for both operational and post-war purposes, to the extent that available transport, communications, and enemy occupation permitted. In this, considerable use was made of air-photo interpretation supported by ground reconnaissance and sampling. To undertake McAdam’s task, the raising of 1 Command Royal Engineers (New Guinea Forests) was complete with the Headquarters Unit, where Lieutenant Colonel Jim McAdam MM (Head of pre-war New Guinea Forest Service) as the Commanding Officer of 1 Aust CRE (New Guinea Forests) (the Headquarters Unit); Major WT (Bill) Suttie commanded the 1 Australian Forest Survey Coy and Major A E (Bert) Head (Victoria) in command of the 2 Australian Forest Survey Coy, were functional by May 1944.

16 Fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History edited by John Dargavel, Denise Gaughwin and Brenda Libbis in 2002 ISBN 0867405309.