An Attempt at Institutional Strengthening
Early Legislation and Establishment.
EminentTPNGForester JimBelfordadvisedthattimber28 has alwaysbeenastrategiccommodity, and in the early days of colonization, say from the 1850’s, material for construction came through either trade arrangements or outright purchase of small parcels of land from traditional owners, which included rights to standing timber.
During the early colonial period, there were two separate pieces of legislation in place to control the exploitation of the forest resources in the two territories: the Timber Ordinance, 1909 Papua, and the Timber Ordinance, 1922 of the Territory of New Guinea. Many of the participants in the developing PNG forest industry came from Queensland.
By the mid-1930’s, a need was seen to develop regulation of the forestry sector, and this was done by the Australian Administration through a Forestry Act which leaned heavily on the Queensland Forest Act29 of that time. This did, for application in the then Territory of Papua and New Guinea, include the transfer of forest rights through Timber Rights Purchases, where rights to forest resources were acquired by the Administration, leaving it to regulate commercial forest production activity, while outright land ownership rights remained with the traditional owners.
By the 1930s, this increasing pressure on the easily accessible forest for sawmilling purposes led to the passing of the Forestry Ordinance, 1936-37 for regulation of the forest sector (Mantu[1] , 1985). Eminent[2] TPNG forester Jim Belford[3] highlighted that this was done by the Australian Administration referring to the Queensland Forest Act of that time.
In 1936, the Timber Ordinace of New Guinea was superseded by the Forestry Ordince 1936.
Responsibility for the administration and development of the forest resources of Papua New Guinea and control of its forest industry was vested in the Department of Forests under powers conferred by the Forestry (New Guinea) Ordinance 1936-62 and the Forestry (Papua) Ordinance 1936-62 and the Forestry regulations as amended.
Nearly all forest in PNG is grown on customary-owned land. The Department of Forests after 1945 had to create a forest concession system that catered for all parties i.e., landowners, government agencies and developers.
For any timber to be harvested on an area, the State had first to acquire timber rights from the landowners before allocating the rights to a logging company. Prior to 1992, this was done through either the negotiation of a timber rights purchase or a local forest agreement. Since 1992, when a new Forest Act came into force, state acquisition of timber rights has been through the negotiation of forest management agreements between the PNG Forest Authority and customary owners.
28 PNGAF Mag Issue #9B-5B4B1 OF 12/7/21 - Eminent TPNG Forester Jim Belford1970-1981
29 Page 3 PNGAF Mag Issue # 9Q2 of 25/3/2023- Queensland PNG forest migration.
[1] Mantu, J. 1985. The history of forest development in Papua New Guinea. In: Vigus, T.R. [ed.]. Seminar proceedings. The future of forestry in Papua New Guinea, held at the PNG University of Technology, Lae, 18th –19th November 1985.
[2] PNGAF Mag Issue #9D2 of 15/10/2021 – The Development of PNG’s forest Management Systems.
[3] PNGAF Mag Issue #9B-5B4B1 OF 12/7/21 - Eminent TPNG Forester Jim Belford1970-1981.
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The Territory policy for the extraction of timber from customarily owned (‘native’) forests was developed over time through the mechanism of a ‘timber rights purchase’ (TRP) agreement, which was a way of purchasing so-called ‘timber rights’ from customary owners of forests, but not alienating the land. Virtually all logging companies in the territorial period were Australianowned or Australian-based. Some of these did a degree of processing locally, but most timber was exported as round logs. The legal framework for forest exploitation had three main elements: Timber Rights Purchase (TRP). Under this arrangement the State acquired timber rights where customary owners were willing to sell. The State then issued a permit or licence to remove the timber on agreed terms and conditions, including the payment of royalties, a portion of which was passed on to customary owners. The TRP arrangement was intended for largescale exploitation and was managed by the Department of Forestry.
Timber Authorities (TA) could be issued, on payment of a fee, to enable any person to purchase a limited quantity of timber directly from a customary owner. Without a TA no one other than a Papua New Guinean could purchase forest produce from a customary owner.
TPNG Department of Forests 1961 Log Measurement (Full Volume) Tables Super Feet regulation 35 (1) Forestry Ordinance
1971 Passage of Forestry (Private Dealings) Act
However, there was no management control over TAs other than limitation on the quantity of timber purchased. Forestry (Private Dealings) Ordinance, 1971 (which became an Act in 1974). This enabled customary owners to dispose of their timber to whomever they wished, provided that (a) the interests of the owners were protected, (b) there was no conflict with national interest, (c) prospects for economic development were considered, and (d) the Administrator gave his approval. (Carson30 1974). At the time, many forestry officers were concerned about these private dealings since their impact was diametrically opposed to proper management of the forest resource.
1974 Passage of Land Groups Incorporation Act and Land Acquisition Act.
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30 30 Carson, G.L., 1974. Forestry and forest policy in Papua New Guinea. Commonwealth Fund for Technical Aid. 20 p.
An Attempt at Forest Administration
By 1937-1938, although nothing had eventuated in Papua or the Northern Territory, an assistant forester had been trained in Canberra and a forest policy had been initiated for Norfolk Island; and a qualified forester J B McAdam had been appointed to the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. 31
John d’Espeissis TPNG Eminent Forester 1938-1940
In 1937, in TPNG, there was a sudden interest in log export, which caused the Administration to revise its legislation and consider the establishment of a forest service. In that territory, there was a mill at Waterfall Bay and mission mills also at Finschhafen, Alexishafen and Marienberg. Mills had also started at Bulolo and Wau, having been flown in from the coast. Sawn and milled timber, however, was still being imported from Australia and the Philippines to Rabaul when John d’Espeissis arrived in Rabaul.
In 1938, John d’Espeissis resigned from the Western Australian Forest Department to join the TPNG Department of Forests (controlled by the Federal Government).
1936. John (Jean) d’Espeissis in front of the Harvey weir, and he on his way to continue a two-year (1935 - 1937) soil sampling survey of forestry land, during which he spent most of his time camping in a tent. The car is a Singer, and he has everything on board including his dog. At this stage he was a probationary officer with the W.A. Forestry Department. By 1937 he was a confirmed Forestry Officer in charge of the project. Source. His son John d'Espeissis 13/9/2023.
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31 Carron L T 1985 A History of Forestry in Australia ANU Press ISBN 0080298745 and Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 15,
2000
(MUP),
John was the second of two permanently appointed forest officers in New Guinea. He was stationed in Rabaul East New Britain. National Archives /Trove Item ID, A518, 852/1/671, New Guinea Staff - J L d'Espeissis - Forest Officer. Access status: Open, Location: Canberra, 19371940, 108419
An article in the Cairns Post Friday 11th February 1938 page 14, describes McAdam and d’Espeissis spending time with the CSIRO Division of Forest Products Melbourne prior to travelling to TPNG.
However32 , John d’Espeissis’ son – John d’Espeissis research advised that from his father’s notes of 1938: In 1938, John resigned (Forestry Dept W.A.) to go to New Guinea. Jim McAdams and he were the first permanent forestry officers appointed to the forestry of NG.
Jim who was a year before him at AFS was the senior, but he remained behind to get married and arrived six months later. In the meantime, John managed to get adopted the new forestry legislation for the Territory based on Lane Poole’s Act for W.A. While John d’Espeissis remained in Rabaul at HQ Jim McAdam went to Wau on the mainland to develop the Hoop Pine areas in particular.”
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32 Personal communication John d’Espeissis (son of forester John d’Espeissis) 29th Sept 2023.
He goes on to say in the hand written notes, “In 1940 John d’Espeissis resigned to join the British Colonial Forestry Service as Assistant Conservator of Forests Fiji. (He had been there as a teenager and wanted to return). Once again, John d’Espeissis succeeded in using the W.A. Forest Act as a model for the new legislation there.
The above clarifies the relevance of John d’Espeissis work in the further development of TPNG forest legislation.
33 J L d’Espeissis 1940 Australian Forestry Volume 5, 1940 Issue 1. The Timber Industry in the Territory of New Guinea. Pages 33-36.
46
33
47
48
John undertook botanical collections to identify and record species of trees suitable for economic milling.
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TPNG Botanical collections by John d”Espeissis 1938
Jim McAdam (1910-1959) was born in Lancashire England. His family emigrated to Queensland. He attended state schools and then Toowoomba Grammar School. In 1922, he joined the Queensland Forest Service as a cadet. He attended the University of Queensland and the Australian Forestry School (Dip. For 1934), where he was dux and awarded the Schlich Medal. He excelled at sport, particularly rugby union. He then undertook field work with Queensland Forest Service.
On 19th January 1938 he married a schoolteacher, Eileen Ewing. That month he was appointed a forest officer in the public service of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Jim was posted to Wau to commence TPNG’s plantation development. With the threat of war in the Pacific, McAdam enlisted in the Australian Military Forces on 19th September 1940 at Wau together with Jim Cavanaugh and Reay Weidenhofer. He began full time duty with New Guinea Volunteer Rifles on 22nd January 1942 and promoted to sergeant. After the Japanese invaded Salamaua in March, he led a party of scouts including Jim Cavanaugh, which established an observation post within a mile (1.6 km) of enemy positions. The intelligence gathered by the team was crucial to the success of the Australian raid in June. McAdam acted as a guide in the foray. Transferred to ANGAU in September, he was awarded the Military Medal for his outstanding service at Salamaua. In April 1943, he was commissioned Lieutenant.
Promoted Major, McAdam was appointed Commander, Royal Australian Engineers (New Guinea Forests) in February 1944. His unit’s task was to assess and map the forest resources of Papua New Guinea for war needs and for future management in peace time. He relinquished the appointment in September 1945. On 8th February 1946, he settled in Port Moresby as acting secretary (later Director) of the Department of Forests TPNG. He was a member (1949-59) of the Territory’s Executive Council and an official member (1951-59) of its Legislative Council. McAdam was active in the affairs of the Papua and New Guinea Scientific Society. (President 1951). He died of a heart attack on 27 February 1959 on leave in Queensland. McAdam National Park near Wau was named in his honour.
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34Carron L T 1985 A History of Forestry in Australia ANU Press ISBN 0080298745 and Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 15, (MUP), 2000
1938 Jim McAdam34 Les Carron summarised Jim McAdam’s PNG Forestry career.
Impact of World War 2 1942-1945
The outbreak of the Japanese War in January 1942 ended all civilian activities in the Territories of Papua and NeI Guinea.
Ken Granger pers com 10 May 2018 provided details from the US Strategic Bombing Survey of the campaign against Rabaul in 1942-5 of the locations of 29 Japanese sawmills in Rabaul. It was reported that the Japanese forces on New Britain took advantage of the large stands of timber there to supply themselves locally with much of their building material. Both Army and Navy operated sawmills and in 1943 there were some 20 of these with a total output of about 185,000 board feet per week.
Presumably, similar sawmilling operations were operated in areas as Wewak and Madang,
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35 3
Location of 29 Japanese sawmills Rabaul and environs 1943. Photo Credit Ken Granger. 35
Details from Linda Cavanaugh Manning 9 April 2019
L to R Geoff Archer (gold miner Wau), Jim Cavanaugh (forester,) Jim McAdam (forester). Photo taken by war photographer Damien Parer in July 1942 just after the famous Salamaua raid. Photo Credit Australian War Memorial
Sawmilling remained quiescent for about a year but as the Australian and Allied forces commenced to build up, a great demand for sawn timber developed.
Owing to the shortages of supply and difficulties with shipping, it was decided to produce as much as possible of these requirements in the Islands themselves. In 1943, ANGAU reorganised the three pre-war mills and established a fourth at Waigani near Milne Bay. Many engineering units established small operations. The Americans brought in sawmilling units. The Australian Government recalled the three military Forestry Companies from England and threw them into the fight for timber in New Guinea early in 1944. The New Zealand Air Force also had sawmilling units attached.
At the end of the war, as far as can be ascertained, some 80 odd million super feet of sawn timber had been produced by these units and in addition, the forests had yielded thousands of pieces of round timbers for escarpments, corduroy, bridge timbers, telephone poles, firewood, and the many other needs of a vast army. It was roughly estimated that this effort had saved two million pounds worth of Australian timber and over three quarters of a million pounds worth of shipping space. Figures, of course, would be very much higher at present day prices.
July 1943 Conference re Utilisation of the Forest Resources of TPNG
In July 1943, a conference convened to consider the utilisation of the forest resources of Papua New Guinea to meet the requirements of the Allied Forces in the area, recommended to the Commonwealth Government that a central timber control be set up to do this, and that any timber surplus to the needs of the service be sent to Australia. As a result, the Engineer in Chief of the Australian Forces was instructed to raise a New Guinea Forest Service within the Royal Australian Engineers, composed of a Headquarters Unit and three or more Survey (reconnaissance) Units to perform in New Guinea, those functions normally carried out by a civil forestry department. Its duties were outlined as
1. The implementation of forest policy as determined by the Commander in Chief.
2. Prior allocation and survey, as far as operational conditions permitted of areas to be milled by all Australian Army sawmilling units.
3. The compilation of information on milling necessary for compensation purposes.
4. Liaison with United States of America forces to bring all timber liaison in New Guinea under a common policy and to obtain records necessary for reverse lend lease adjustments.
5. Liaison with Australian New Guinea Administration unit (ANGAU) on civil rights.
6. The undertaking of surveys to provide the maximum forestry information.
7. Correlation and maintenance of forestry information and records in such a manner that they could be handed over to a civil service at an appropriate time.
At the conference in Melbourne on 29/7/1943 representatives of the Australian and US Armies (including Jim McAdam), ANGAU, the Australian Inspector General of Forests (Lane Poole), the Allied Works Council, the Australian Controller of Timber, Department of Munitions and Department of External Territories, focused on three main questions - shipping, sawmill plant and manpower with a central timber control to come under ANGAU led by Jim McAdam.
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May 1944
The ensuing structure to meet the requirements of the July 1943 plan is reflected in the table below describing the Royal Australian Engineers Forestry Units as of 5 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.
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 airphoto 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.
Major Max Jacobs headed the technical unit in Australia responsible for organising wood testing etc.
Early in 1944, the Australian Army decided to form under the Engineers, a unit to record the many sawmilling operations and make surveys of the forest resources, using all the advantages of operational mapping, air photos and transport facilities then available. The CRE - NG Forests was thus formed with two Forest Survey Companies. McAdam was placed in command of the CRE-NG Forests and given authority to recruit as many personnel experienced in forestry as he could lay his hands on. Two officers of the pre-war service Mr Cavanagh and Mr Vickery were recruited. The Air Force, the Navy, Malaria Units, Engineers, the Infantry, and the Artillery all contributed, with the result that they had a concentration of foresters representing every state in Australia.
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Strength – established 2/1 Aust Command Royal Engineers (Forestry) 23 2/1 Aust Forestry Coy 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
UNIT
The unit had come together about mid-1944 and for the next three months at Lae was put through an intensive training in recognition of New Guinea species and handling New Guinea conditions. Senior officers of the unit closely followed the establishment of each new base to report on immediate timber supplies for operational purposes. During this time, a plan was draw up for the survey of the timber resources of as much of the Territories as possible. This survey was launched about the end of 1944 and continued till the war ended, and the units were disbanded about October 1945. One of the functions of the CRE-NG Forests written in instructions at the formation was “the maintenance of forestry records in a manner suitable for handing over to a Civilian Forest service at the appropriate time.” Consequently, when the unit was disbanded, Mr Vickery, who was now the Forest Ranger at Bulolo, was left in charge of the records, which he handed over to Mr Cavanaugh, when he returned to the Islands in his civilian capacity.
In a paper presented to the Fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History36 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.
37Note the format for TPNG patrol reports included a section on war damage compensation for applicable customary owners.
36
ISBN 0867405309
37 https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb9046273d/_1.pdf
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Fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History edited by John Dargavel, Denise Gaughwin and Brenda Libbis in 2002
Need for Training and Development of Forest Management Personnel
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Photo Credit Cliff Southwell Headquarters of Department of Forests Konedobu till 1970
Photo Credit Mary Jenkin. 38Gogol Survey Boss Boys 1963 L to R Norm Endacott; Johnny Lowien; David “dokka” Reid, Eric Hammermaster, Jim Cavanaugh, Evan Shield, Peter Eddowes, Pilot Hurrell; Don McIntosh, Bill Jenkin, unknown, unknown, Kevin White, unknown
38 Personal Communication Eric Hammermaster 11/3/21. Gogol trial survey Nov to Dec 1963. Based at Utu Catholic Mission Station. Unknowns would include helicopter mechanic of Helicopter Utilities, soils staff of DASF as Paul Aland and DIES. One of the PNG forestry assistants was Gallope Mato who trained under Jim Cavanaugh post war.
During the immediate post-World War 2 period39, the Angau Administration set up several sawmills in major centres to kick start post-war reconstruction. For example, the old market location in Lae was the site of an Angau sawmill, and similar sites can be found in other centres, e.g., Rabaul and Madang. When private enterprise began to move into timber production, and the sector became private enterprise oriented, the Administration removed itself from direct operational involvement and focused on regulation of a growing economic sub-sector.
Jim Cavanaugh came to New Guinea in 1938 and joined the New Guinea Public Service in 1940 In 1941, he enlisted and served - first with the New Guinea Volunteer Riflemen (NGVR) and later with the 2nd Australian Forest Survey Company. He also conducted intelligence work with the Central Bureau He spent almost all the war years outside Australia often behind Japanese lines. He was a commissioned officer and was demobilised in December 1945.
In January 1946, he returned to Papua New Guinea as a forester and was put in charge of the Northern Region. He was based in Kerevat near Rabaul, and he set himself the task of getting the sawmill at Kerevat working to produce timber to rebuild the town of Rabaul after the ravages of the war. When he needed engines and gearboxes, Jim converted abandoned Japanese motors and gearboxes to power the mill. He initially ran a team of Chinese labourers that had been abandoned in Rabaul by the Japanese army and later a team of Papuan New Guineans. Pat, his wife, did the books.
Training Forest Industry Workers Kerevat
Sawmill New Britain after World War Two
1946 Pat Cavanaugh standing near one of the stacks of swan timber.
Photo credit Linda Cavanaugh Manning.
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1946. One of the refurbished saws in Kerevat sawmill.
Photo credit Linda Cavanaugh Manning.
39 Page 4 Jim Belford Eminent TPNG Forester 1970-1981 PNGAF Mag Issue # 9B-5B4B1 of 12thJuly 2021.
For future development of forest management systems need to develop professional institutions
education training facilities such as the Bulolo Forestry College.
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Forestry College Bulolo L to R. Norma Collis, Blue Ramsay, Joe Havel, Bill Finlayson, Heinar Streimann. Photo credit Norma/Cheryl Collis 1964/65.
Forestry College Bulolo group photo was taken of the staff and students. L to R Norma Collis, Olga Woolcott, Heiner Streimann, Arthur Ramsay, Leon Clifford, Evan Shield, Gerry Cullen, Vivienne Shield, Pat Cattanach. Photo Credit Janelle Clifford 1966.
Need for Forest Management Research and Development of Forest Resources
To administer forest management systems in PNG, Australian foresters needed to undertake natural forest studies including silvicultural and increment studies to improve the sustained yield of the natural forest stands.
These studies into the mixed tropical forests needed to ensure practicable cost-effective silvicultural systems without impairing the maximum and perpetual productivity of the site. At the same time these studies needed to ensure prevention of undesirable changes in forest composition and site factors so that needs could be met from forests managed on a sound ecological basis.
Australian foresters commenced detailed field studies into afforestation and reforestation activities of both natural (Araucarias as hoop and klinkii, and E. deglupta) and exotic timber species (e.g., teak).
Australian foresters involved in major forest extension programs, especially in the Highlands, undertook extensive studies into wood fuel including surveys of present and future fuelwood requirements in relation to available and potential supplies, and on increasing the efficiency of wood fuel burning equipment.
Australian foresters undertook studies into the financing of silvicultural operations for regenerating logged over natural forests. Separate studies for the establishment of timber tree plantation forests were undertaken.
Studies into Mangroves especially the need for preventing the clearing of the protective mangrove fringe in TPNG were considered of high importance
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Photo Credit Barry Gray Entomology Building Forest Research Centre Bulolo 1968
Summation of Development of Forest Management Systems to 1959
Jim McAdam’s forest management achievements as Director of the Department of Forests PNG reflect a rational economic approach to forest politics. His post-war activities were associated with providing timber for reconstruction of war damage and laying foundations for future forestry development The demands and devastation caused by the war, the expanded services needed to cater for the immediate development of the community, plus an increased demand in Australia for woods, made visible for the first time a live picture of forest development.
McAdam took PNG as information of the forest resources accumulated, from a scene of early exploiters of PNG’s forest resources for sandalwood, with a small sawmill industry supplying local needs and a small export trade of walnut logs to a sophisticated export industry of plywood, sawn timber, and logs to global markets, especially Australasia. It took World War 11 to provide an impetus to expand the scope of the forest from its traditional role.
McAdam undertook ongoing initiatives to ensure forest resources for future development capitalising on the results of the Army Forest Resource Survey group he commanded. At the same time, he continued to ensure traditional owners’ rights were enshrined in forest legislation.
McAdam’s foresight saw development of initiatives for reforestation and afforestation to ensure long term forest resources availability for the country of PNG.
At the same time, he established training initiatives for ongoing professional forester development with the establishment of the TPNG Australian Forester cadetship scheme. His objective was that this be the forerunner to the training of PNG foresters.
Jim McAdam MM 1952. Part of his Presidential address to PNG Scientific Society40 .
In the period from European contact and settlement in the late nineteenth century to the end of World War 11, the timber industry was concerned mainly with speculative exploitation and reconnaissance. The utilization of the forests was mostly incidental to other activities like gold mining. Only ten sawmills were operating supplying local mission or company needs, with any surplus being sold for use in the small public and private building programmes. The only other trade was speculative exploitation of selected species as sandalwood (Santalum macgregorii) from around Port Moresby and New Guinea Walnut (Dracontomelum mangiferum) from New Britain and New Ireland.
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40 PNG Scientific Society Presidential Address 1952 “Forestry in New Guinea” J B McAdam
In New Guinea, there was a sudden interest in log export in 1937, which caused the Administration to revise its legislation and consider the establishment of a forest service. In that territory, there was a mill at Waterfall Bay and mission mills also at Finschhafen, Alexishafen and Marienberg. Mills had also started at Bulolo and Wau, having been flown in from the coast. Sawn and milled timber, however, was still being imported from Australia and the Philippines to Rabaul when McAdam arrived in New Guinea in 1938 to initiate the new Forest Service. From its inception shortly afterwards until 1942, the one mill established in Rabaul led a precarious existence. However, under the stimulus of a depressed copra market and an active interest by American buyers in New Guinea walnut, many planters in New Britain and New Ireland commenced harvesting logs. In 1940/41, exports in logs and flitches of this species reached about seven and a half million super feet.
There were various attempts to establish sawmilling operations in Papua. The most tenacious of these was the Port Romilly venture and that, with Kwato Mission sawmill and the Labe Labe sawmill, which was established mainly to produce cases for shipping desiccated coconut from Milne Bay, formed the whole of the milling operations when the Japanese entered the War in 1942. Those three mills, later controlled by ANGAU, but manned with their peacetime personnel, produced a very credible supply of timber during the early days of the struggle.
During the War, the Allied Armed forces, especially ANGAU established their own sawmilling companies. By the end of the war, approximately 190,000 cubic metres of sawn timber had been produced. With the cessation of hostilities in 1945, except for Port Moresby all the cities were in ruins. This devastation coupled with a revised policy of economic activity, created an immediate demand for sawn and seasoned timber. The demand for timber in Australia and the scarcity of shipping space, made it necessary for the bulk of timber for reconstruction to be produced locally. The Provisional Administration established, and operated government run sawmills in Lae and Rabaul.
FAO in 194841, reported that in TPNG, there were some 11 sawmills operating which in 1947 produced about 21,000 m3 (740,000 cu. ft.) of lumber. The Australian government operated a sawmill to train local sawyers and some skilled laborers. It was estimated that rehabilitation requirements will need almost 23,600 m3 (830,000 cu. ft.) a year for the next five or six years. Minor forest products include sago from the Metroxylon palm, nipa palm leaves for thatching, mangrove bark for tannin, dammar gum, canes, and bamboos.
Since the War, and owing partly to devastation by war, and partly due to the expanded services needed to cope with development of the community, there has been a greatly increased demand for sawn timber in the Territory. This has led to the gradual building up of the local sawmilling industry. In 1952, the sawn output will reach about 10 million super feet of timber requiring some 20 million super feet of logs. Since the War, there has been an embargo on the export of sawn timber, but this has been eased. For some time, we have been sending out six and a half inch square bulks of hoop and klinkii pine to provide battery separator veneer which is in critical supply in Australia. Last year, our exports of this highly selected material exceeded 400,000 super feet. Now general lines can be exported provided the millers keep a sufficient stock in their yards to ensure local supplies.
Since the War, logs have been exported annually but these exports remain constant between one and one and a half million super feet. Recently a tender has been accepted for the purchase of some 70 million super feet of timber on the Trans Busu at about 7-8 million super feet per year. It is expected that this will boost the log export considerably in about twelve months. Within the
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41 UNASYLVA Vol @ #6 Nov -Dec 1948
last few months, exports of private logs from agricultural leases in the Lae area has commenced because of active clearing for the establishment of cocoa crops.
FAO reported that shortly, a modern plywood manufacturing industry will be established for processing the pines of the Bulolo Valley. It is expected that within three years the output will reach 30 million square feet of plywood on a 3/16-inch basis.
McAdam reported that shortly, a modern plywood manufacturing industry would be established for processing the pines of the Bulolo Valley. It was expected that within three years the output will reach 30 million square feet of plywood on a 3/16-inch basis. Already a start has been made on reforestation with the same species. (Hoop and Klinkii). Last year, 45 acres were planted. In 1952, 100 acres were planted, and in the nursery, there is stock for 300 acres of plantation next year. It is expected that the future plantings will be about 600 to 700 acres per year. At the end of the rotation (50 years), it is calculated that the annual cut will exceed 60 million super feet of logs as against the rationed cut of 10 million super feet from the virgin stands. There will be a great volume of early thinnings from the plantations in about ten years and this may well lead to the establishment of the first pulp factory in the Territory.
42By 1952, the local sawmilling industry had reached the stage where it was able to meet the local demand and output was some 24 thousand cubic metres per annum
In 1952 though, only 4.5 thousand cubic metres of logs and 2.4 thousand cubic metres of sawn timber were exported.
In 1954, a plywood mill was established in Bulolo by Commonwealth New Guinea Timbers, a joint enterprise between the Australian Government and Bulolo Gold Dredging Company. By 1969 this plywood mill was producing some 3.34 million square metres of plywood.
By 1969, forest product exports had risen to 147 thousand cubic metres of logs, 17 thousand cubic metres of sawn timber, 2.48 million square metres of plywood and 12.4 million square metres of veneer.
43 Interesting publications produced included PLANIM DIWAI YAR - Grow Casuarina by the Dept. of Forests 1967 where extensive community plantings of Casuarina in the Highlands were undertaken especially for fuel wood and shelter requirements.
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42 UNASYLIVA
43 Department of Forests 1967 Planim Diwai Yar
Summation of Development of Forest Management Systems to 1970
Bill Suttie Managing Director PNG Forest Service 1959-1970
Bill Suttie’s Presidential address to PNG Scientific Society 1962 44
Photo credit Linda Cavanaugh Manning
• Suttie linked political directives of Spender in 1951 and Hasluck in 1957 with development of the functions of the Department of Forests in resource investigation, forestry education, biological and utilisation research, reforestation, afforestation, and acquisition of a permanent forest estate.
• Suttie noted that this marks a change from a period of exploitation to one of a consciousness of the need for a long-term forest conservation policy primarily in the interests of the native inhabitants of the Territory and the future need to train them in an awareness of the value of its forest resources.
• He outlined the extent of forests required for permanent or sustained supply of wood products and proposed measures in acquiring such a forest estate.
The Late 1950’s to 1975
In 1969, JANT produced its first trial batch of wood chips in Madang from PNG tropical hardwoods.
The export earnings of the PNG forest industry grew from 48,704 kina in 1947 to 25.4 million kina in 1969.
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44 PNG Scientific Society Presidential Address 1962 “A Transition Period” W R Suttie
63 45 45
Department of Forests 1970 Second Trade Note Properties and uses of Papua and New Guinea Timbers (Peter Eddowes FPRC)
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Summation of Development of Forest Management Systems to 1975
Don McIntosh46 Managing Director 1970-1975
Photo credit Photo Credit Janelle Clifford 7/4/20
1966 Bulolo Forestry College
Kevin White Assistant Director till 1977 at Brown River Plantation 1970 with Evo Vai.
46 PNG Scientific Society Presidential Address 1976 “Australian Forest Policy in the territory of Papua and New Guinea” K J White
Under McIntosh and White’s management, the Department of Forests achievements by 1975 were:
Forest Resources. In the period 1946-1963 some 600,000 hectares were assessed by conventional methods. From 1964 to 1967 some 2.8 million hectares were assessed. As of 1975, a total of 5.2 million hectares had been assessed. The investigations confirmed that there was a resource of magnitude, it quantified the resource, and identified the areas considered suitable for development.
Botany
• Collection and maintenance of specimens of Papuasia plants. From the collections commenced in 1944, the herbarium collection at 1975 has over 250,000 PNG specimens. From the collections, followed taxonomic studies of the flora leading to various publications and training manuals.
• Development at Lae of the National Botanical Gardens with living collections.
• Intensive service in identification of plant specimens.
• Communication; extension services.
• National staff training.
Forest Industry
• From two sawmills in 1946 to 1975 with some 90 sawmills, one plywood plant; three veneer plants and one wood chip mill.
• An annual log harvest of some 800,000 m3 as of 1975.
• By 1975, export earnings of some Kina 15 million.
• Establishment of a Papua New Guinea Timber Marketing Advisory Panel.
• Development of an appropriate wood utilisation research program:
(a) Determination of the properties and uses of PNG timbers.
(b) Development of appropriate timber preservation treatments for sawn and round timbers.
(c) Determination of kiln drying schedules.
(d) Development of minor forest product industries.
(e) Provision of mill wright services and extensive industry advice services.
(f) Timber design services.
(g) Technical publication services especially for building designs using local materials.
(h) Training of mill operators.
Forest Management
• Development and administration of complex forest management agreements including regeneration treatment.
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Reforestation
• Over 16,000 hectares plantations established at Bulolo/Wau, Kerevat, Port Moresby, Goroka, and Whagi Valley.
• Nursery and field techniques established for species as teak (Tectona grandis); Kamarere (Eucalyptus deglupta), hoop and klinkii pine (Araucaria cunninghamii and A. hunsteinii), Eucalyptus and Pinus spp.
• Country wide extension programs, especially in the Highlands.
• Natural regeneration techniques for cut over forests, growth studies, enrichment planting techniques.
• Intensive research programs for plantation species covering species selection, tree breeding, nutrition studies, protection from insects and fungal pathogens, growth studies, range management; extension practices, environmental planning.
Training
• Sub professional training program commenced in 1962 at Bulolo Forestry College which by 1975 had successfully trained some 421 trainees. In 1975, BFC could accommodate some 170 students.
1. Inservice for expatriate field officers.
2. Two-year technical certificate with entry level of form 2-3
3. Short vocational courses for supervisory staff training.
4. 1967 – three-year course leading to a Diploma in Forestry.
5. 1973-75 selected field staff 12-month course for a Certificate in Forestry.
6. 1969 three-year Diploma of Cartography course.
• Professional Training Program
1. Course activated in 1971/72 for a Forestry Degree course, commenced with 2 years science and two years at UNITECH Lae.
2. Four graduates expected in 1976 and 10 in 1977.
• Industrial training
1. Closure of government sawmills had a detrimental impact on training of industrial staff
2. Negotiations in recent years will lead to the establishment of an industry training centre in Lae (TITC).
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CONTRIBUTORS TIMELINE
1908 Gilbert Burnett
1911 James Mann
1921-1935 Charles Edward Lane Poole
1938-1940 John d’Espeissis
1938-1959 Jim McAdam
1959-1970 Bill Suttie
1970-1975 Don McIntosh
1970-1977 Kevin White
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68 BURNETT 190847
47 1908 Gilbert Burnett Timber Trees of the Territory of Papua Reports and catalogue Public Library of Victoria 31 Aug 1911
69 2
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JAMES MANN 1911
James Mann was a leading researcher and authority on determining the strength and durability of Australasian timbers, and pioneered methods for identifying species using microscopic examination, and splinter tests. Mann was Government research scholar at the School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, 1910-1912, and oversaw the Engineering Laboratory, for 20 years when Professor W. C. Kernot occupied the chair of engineering.
James Mann wrote several papers in conjunction with the Victorian Institute of Engineers, the Royal Society of Victoria, and other technical bodies, and was consulted by the Victorian Forests Department after it was formed in 1908. He published a textbook Australian Timber: its strength, durability, and identification, 1900. An extended second edition was published in 1921, that included more detailed research based on test samples with known age, forest location, and soil conditions, as well as including details about imported timber species from Papua, Burma, New Guinea, and New Zealand.
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1885-1970
DEPT OF FORESTRY PNG 1922-24 OCCUPATION Forester
WHAT LOCALITIES DID YOU WORK IN
Forest surveys of Papua in 1922-1923
Forest Surveys Mandated Territory of New Guinea
1923-1924
Reports for the Commonwealth Government of Australia
Career Achievements
1908-10 District Forest Officer Transvaal
1911-16 Conservator of Forests Sierra Leone
1916-21 Conservator of Forests Western Australia
1922-24 Report PNG Forest Resources for Commonwealth Government
1925-27 Forest Advisor to Commonwealth Government
1927-45 Inspector- General of Forests –Commonwealth Forestry Bureau Acting Principal Australian Forestry School
Obituary: Charles Edward Lane Poole (1875-1970), with special reference to his forest surveys of Papua and New Guinea.
Originally published as:
From exploitation to science: Lane Poole’s forest surveys of Papua and New Guinea, 1922–1924. Historical Records of Australian Science 17: 71–90. by John Dargavel School of Resources, Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2000, Australia. Email: john.dargavel@anu.edu.au
(Reprinted here by kind permission of the author.)
Summary
Charles Lane Poole (1885–1970) was engaged from 1922 to 1924 to locate forest resources that could be exploited for a timber export trade from the Territories of Papua and New Guinea. He took his brief beyond this to establish a scientific base for forestry, explore country beyond the limits of white contact, and contribute to the mapping of the Territories. He did not find a timber resource for export, but he classified the forests, assessed likely areas, and collected some 800 herbarium specimens. This paper examines his surveys considering these dimensions, the context of time and place, and Lane Poole’s beliefs and energy.
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NAME
Charles Edward Lane Poole
Introduction
Charles Edward Lane Poole (1885–1970) conducted a forest survey of the Australian Territory of Papua in 1922 and 1923, and another in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea in 1923 and 1924. He classified the forest types, assessed timber areas, collected some 800 herbarium specimens, ventured into areas unexplored by white men, climbed mountains, took star sights, and made trigonometrical observations. His report on both Territories was printed in the Commonwealth’s Parliamentary Papers in 1925.1 It is a lengthy document of 209 pages containing not only his descriptions of the forests and their economic potential, but also detailed scientific descriptions of 517 species, lists of the common names of species in different languages, diaries of two expeditions, rainfall records, geographical data of altitude, latitude and longitude, and policy recommendations. The Queensland Herbarium has his collection of 345 species of which forty-four are type specimens from which the species are identified. More personal information about the surveys is contained in letters that he wrote to his wife, Ruth, which are now held in the National Library of Australia.2
Lane Poole extended his ostensible purpose of conducting a timber resource survey to that of providing a scientific basis for understanding the Territories’ forests and hence for their eventual management on forestry principles. His work can be seen as a late moment in the reach of colonial science into new lands, albeit one articulated through Australia. He held a passionate belief in the progressive and redemptive power of science. As he wrote during the Second World War, ‘science … alone can pull humanity back from the brink and … lead to higher evolution’.3 He was determined to make his surveys science-based and thorough, as he put it in a letter towards the end of his time in New Guinea: ‘I can generally get through in places where others find the difficulties insuperable. It is cussedness more than anything else.’4.
Lane Poole was born into a distinguished intellectual and academic English family of British Museum curators, Egyptologists, and historians.5 His older brothers were officers in the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy. Charles Lane Poole received the last years of his schooling in Dublin and spent at least a year studying engineering there. He lost his left hand in a shooting accident when he was about 19 and wore a steel hook in its place for the remainder of his life. He did not continue with engineering but obtained a cadetship from the Colonial Office to study forestry in the French National Forestry School, L’École Nationale des Eaux et Forêts at Nancy, from which he graduated in 1906. The Colonial Office sent him to South Africa where after a few months he was appointed as a District Forester in the Transvaal. He worked there very effectively but resigned on principle in 1910 when he disagreed with the Government’s forest and employment policies. His next posting was to Sierra Leone where he set up the tiny Forestry Department, established an arboretum, collected herbarium specimens that he sent to Kew for identification, published a plant list, and undertook significant surveys to locate forest reserves. He married Ruth Pollexfen (1885–1974) whilst on leave in 1911 but returned to Sierra Leone by himself. In 1916, he secured the significant appointment as Conservator in charge of Western Australia’s Forest Department and was joined in Perth by his family. He worked with prodigious energy there, reorganizing the Department, publicizing forestry, drafting the new Western Australian Forests Act 1918, and seeing it passed, establishing a series of arboreta, and taking part in InterState Forestry Conferences and the first Empire Forestry Conference held in London in 1920. He gained a substantial reputation and was regarded by many people as the most able forester in Australia. However, at the end of 1921, when he was 36, he again resigned on
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principle as he disagreed with the State Government’s action in extending the licences of a large timber company.
It was most unusual for a man with Charles Lane Poole’s experience and status as former head of a State Government department to undertake resource surveys, but he needed the work. He brought strongly held views and great energy to the task. He was bitter that the Western Australian Government had not followed his professional advice about forest conservation that he believed should be a paramount concern. He saw it as a failure of ‘party government.’ His training at Nancy had immersed him in the culture of the French Forest Service, which at the time was centralized, disciplined, uniformed, and led by a social elite.6 And his years in Sierra Leone, which was run as a Crown Colony without local representation, had given him an experience of direct rule. It had strengthened his belief that ‘a sufficient staff of competent and energetic foresters … with similar staff in the Agricultural Department will go a long way to solving the serious question’ of economic dependence on a limited range of exports.7 He saw the situation in Papua and in New Guinea in much the same light.
Origins of Lane Poole’s Surveys
Australia administered Papua from 1901 and declared it a Commonwealth Territory in 1906. It took over German New Guinea during the First World War and was mandated to administer it by the League of Nations in 1920. The Territories attracted little interest in Australia in the 1920s, their combined European population was slightly under 2000, their exports were unimportant to Australia, their commercial history was poor, and they required grants to administer.8 Nevertheless, they attracted men, like Judge Hubert Murray (1861–1940) and Staniforth Smith (1869–1934) who were remarkably dedicated to good government. The only scientist they employed was the Government Geologist, Evan Stanley (1885–1924). However, their botany had long attracted collectors, particularly of the orchids. A formidable British Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William MacGregor (1846–1919), had even sent specimens gathered on his ascent of Mount Victoria to Ferdinand von Mueller, the Government Botanist in Victoria, in 1889.9
When Murray was appointed Administrator of Papua in 1907, cedar logs were being exported, but there was only a little practical knowledge of the other species. He obtained a tropical forest inspector, Gilbert Burnett, from Queensland to examine the possibilities. Burnett visited eight river and coastal areas and, although limited by where he could get to, he listed 120 species of trees by their Papuan names, obtained wood samples and classified them according to use, but not botanically. He believed that there would be good timber on the higher lands he had not explored.10 In 1918 the Department of Home and Territories tried unsuccessfully to engage an experienced tropical forester from the Philippines or to borrow one from India with the wider brief ‘to inspect the timber resources … and report … the best means of conserving and developing these resources’. 11.
Parts of the Australian timber industry became worried about their supplies when New Zealand had banned exports of its white pine (Podocarpus dacrydioides) and kauri (Agathis australis) that were used for butter boxes, while at the same time supplies of Australian kauri (Agathis robusta) and hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) were diminishing.12 In 1920 a Melbourne timber agent, Victor Trapp, arranged for one of the timber companies to investigate the possibilities of obtaining case, match and plywood material from Papua.13 Nothing came of the industry investigation, but when Trapp learnt of Lane Poole’s resignation from Western Australia, he suggested that the Commonwealth should secure his
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services.14 With no other job in sight, Lane Poole accepted a 12-month appointment that was later extended by 6 months. For New Guinea, W. M. Hughes, in one of his more erratic actions as Prime Minister, supported an ineffective private scientific expedition at about the same time. This took with it a forest inspector from Queensland, F. W. Hayes, who fell ill, and it was left to the geologist, Evan Stanley, to write the report, including a few notes on timber.15 The new administration knew little else about New Guinea’s forests, but when it heard that two companies were being formed to exploit their timber, it asked Lane Poole to continue his Papuan survey for a further year in New Guinea.16
Location, Classification, Assessment, and Identification
Conducting forest resource surveys in the Territories posed problems that Lane Poole had to overcome. In the 1920s the frontier of contact and pacification was still being extended, so that travelling safely required caution and armed native police to mind up to forty carriers with equipment and food.17 Lane Poole was able to join one patrol into the Upper Era River led by an experienced District Magistrate and another to Mt Obree led by Stanley, but otherwise he travelled ‘with the speed, absence of fuss, and economy of transport of an experienced District Officer’.18 The Government stations in Papua and the Lutheran mission stations in New Guinea helped him with information and in recruiting carriers. However, he had to train local people on the job with all the difficulties of language and education that that entailed. It is not clear from the records whether he took some of the assistants he trained from area to area as only one man, Peter, who looked after his herbarium specimens, is mentioned from several areas.
Charles Lane Poole at Madang, 1924, showing the remains of a radio damaged in the raid at Kohu. Note his gaunt appearance after the rigours of his expedition to Mt Otto. Source: C. E. Lane Poole, Forest Resources (1925), facing p. 198, courtesy of the National Archives of Australia.
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Location
Lane Poole’s first task was to locate the forest areas that might be of timber interest. Burnett’s report, a handful of small mission sawmills, a mill recently started by Lewis Lett in Papua and another in New Britain provided information about places to start his surveys in the coastal areas. These were under Government control and simple maps of the major features were available. However, to find any major resource he had to explore the more distant, higher country where, as he knew from MacGregor’s report, valuable conifers might be found. In doing so he had to go beyond the pacified areas and into country where the rivers and ridges had not been charted. The problems that this entailed were inherent in the general extension of Australia’s rule and basic knowledge.
Lane Poole took an aneroid barometer, a boiling point thermometer, a theodolite, and a radio with him. On journeys, he typically read the barometer several times during the day to calculate altitude and the thermometer at mid-day and evening to confirm it. He took rounds of angles to and from peaks with the theodolite, and at various places set up his radio to receive time signals with which he could calibrate his watch and calculate longitude and latitude from star sights. In the expedition that they did together, Stanley asserted that ‘numerous bearings and triangulations are essential to the preparation of a map sufficiently accurate for Geological and Forestry matters’, and that he was ‘exceedingly grateful for his [Lane Poole’s] assistance from time to time in determining our positions at various points’.19 Lane Poole took a camera on his journeys and developed his own glass plates in the field.
Classification
The second tier of the work was to classify the forests into broad categories. Lane Poole adopted a simple scheme of recognising a dry forest belt and classifying the remainder on altitude. Given that climate is strongly correlated with altitude and significantly influences vegetation, it proved a robust system. He was able to assign altitudes to the classes as he accumulated observations on his journeys through the Territories (Table 1).
Assessment
Where Lane Poole found timber stands, he made strip assessments by the standard method of the time.21 It involved cutting straight lines through the forest, about 20 chains (403 m) apart, and measuring the girth of every tree over 6 feet in girth (1.8 m, or 0.58 m diameter) within 1 chain (20 m) either side of the lines. Lane Poole estimated the height of the bole from which sawlogs might be cut and could then calculate the volume of potential logs per unit area. As he tallied the measurements by species, he could report the proportion of valuable species in the total. These calculations were critical to evaluating the feasibility of any logging
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Class Altitude Feet Metres Lowland forests 0–1000 0–305 Foothill forests 1000–5500 305–1677 Mid-mountain forests 5500–7500 1677–2287 Mossy forests 7500–11,000 2287–3355 Alpine forests >11,000 >3355
operation, the economics of which are governed by the volume per unit area that can be extracted and sold. Although the criteria were not laid down, Lane Poole needed to find reasonably large and accessible areas carrying at least something of the order of 30 cubic metres per hectare (weighing 20–40 tonnes per hectare when cut, depending on species) of saleable logs before the investment required for any significant export operation could be considered.
Lane Poole used a gang of nine to cut the lines, climb trees and carry the equipment and herbarium material. He was able to train his ‘boss boy’ to site the lines with a prismatic compass and to lay out the 5 chain (100 m) steel band that was used to place markers at intervals along the lines. Assessment in tropical rain forests is slow, tiring work. The understorey vegetation with creepers and vines makes it difficult to get to each tree. Many of them are buttressed so that taking a girth measurement involves clambering up to a clear part of the bole above the buttresses. Estimating the bole height can be difficult because lower layers in the canopy frequently obscure the view. The damp ground is often slippery and keeping the record sheets dry in the frequently wet conditions requires care. Leeches and stinging trees (Urticaceae) add further miseries. Lane Poole made nineteen strip surveys in the lowland and mid-mountain rainforests of the two Territories. The records of two were subsequently destroyed in a raid at Kohu (described later), but the records of the remaining seventeen show that he laid down a total of 105 kilometres of lines and measured 4330 trees. It was a substantial effort for one forester working with assistants he trained on the job.
Identification
A major problem for Lane Poole, as for anyone working in a new area of tropical forest, was to determine the species of each tree, given that there were 50–60 different species at each site and about 400 overall. Although botanical nomenclature is determined primarily from the buds, flowers, fruits, and leaves, these are hard to gather and, in the case of flowers and fruits, are seasonal. Even when the flowers and fruits are present, it is hardly possible to examine their fine structural detail and consult reference books in a tropical rain forest. Even if this had been possible, some of the species he encountered had not been classified these are the type specimens now held in the Queensland Herbarium, mentioned earlier. However, people with an intimate knowledge of the trees of a particular area can name them from the look of their leaves, bark, trunks, crowns, and many small details. Lane Poole found that ‘The bush native has a really wonderful knowledge of his trees.’22 He used their skill in identifying each species to record them consistently across each site. For each new species he encountered, he collected specimens of the bark, wood, and leaves, as well as the flowers or fruit when they were present, sometimes trying to shoot material down from the crowns but more commonly having someone climb up. He used a pre-printed sheet of headings to record each species by its herbarium number and local name and to give a detailed description of the living tree.
Although his focus was on export possibilities rather than ethnobotany or linguistics, he frequently noted local uses and names. The occurrence of many languages in Papua and New Guinea meant that trees with the same botanical name had different local names. For example, he reported that the widespread Octomeles sumatrana is known as Ilimo (Motu and Suka), Benumba (Binandele), I-ohea (Vailala), Erima (Rabaul), Usa (Yalu) and Kakerim (Yabim).23 He recommended that some single common name should be adopted for any species that became commercially traded, and what he called ilimo in his report is now known as erima throughout Papua New Guinea.24 As he travelled through the country,
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he also collected herbarium specimens at places where he did not make timber assessments, and from plants other than trees if they were in flower, in order to contribute to general botanical knowledge (Table 2).25
Lane Poole devised a metal drying box that he used to dry his specimens instead of pressing them between paper in the conventional way. Even when dried initially and kept pressed in paper, he passed them through the drier periodically to ensure that they were kept free of mould until they could be despatched to the Queensland Herbarium for identification. Overall, Lane Poole collected about 800 herbarium specimens, of which some were destroyed in the raid at Kohu. Five hundred and seventeen species are listed in his report.
The specimens sent to the Queensland Herbarium for identification arrived in good condition, thanks to Lane Poole’s attention to drying them carefully. They were examined by C. T. White and W. D. Francis, helped by E. D. Merrill, the Director of the Philippine Herbarium who visited Australia for the 1923 Pan-Pacific Science Congress. K. W. Braid at Kew and A. Guillaumin at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris also gave advice on two specimens sent to them. White and Francis provided Lane Poole with as many names as they could for his 1925 report but could not publish their final identifications until 1926 and 1927.26 They particularly valued Lane Poole’s focus on the larger trees; these had been largely neglected by previous collectors, which no doubt accounted for the inclusion of the forty-four type specimens, a remarkable result for someone who was not a botanist.27 They noted that the collection showed that the flora of the Territories was closer to that of Southeast Asia than to Australia’s.
Lane Poole collected wood samples that he examined himself using a set of hand lenses. He recorded a general description of each, the width of the sapwood, the colours of sap and
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Type Number Percentage Trees, large and/or tall 243 Trees, medium 68 Trees, small 82 Subtotal 393 76 Bamboo 1 Palms 6 Climbers and Lianes, ratten 15 Subtotal 22 4 Shrubs 21 Orchids 16 Creepers 12 Ground covers, herbs, sedges, nettles, etc. 53 Subtotal 102 20 Total 517 100
Table 2. Number of species collected as herbarium specimens.
heartwood, and measurements of the frequency of the rays and pores. He also remarked on how the wood cuts in general categories of ‘cuts hard,’ ‘cuts firm,’ ‘soft to cut’, ‘splits easily’, and so on. Lane Poole also collected and described samples of the bark. His report includes measurements of the basic density of the wood samples and of the colour and presence of precipitates in solutions extracted from many but not all the wood and bark samples. He does not report whether he made the density measurements and extractions himself.
Territory Journeys
Lane Poole could not make a systematic survey of all the forests in both Territories because the basic mapping and exploration was still incomplete in the 1920s. However, he tried to cover the most promising areas and the major forest types in a series of journeys to different parts (Fig. 1). Each journey had to be organized separately with food, sea transport to the starting point, native policemen ‘police boys’ in the argot of colonialism and carriers who were recruited locally. Feeding his party of up to fifty people was a limiting factor on the more distant journeys where rice had to be carried in. In the closer areas, he was often able to obtain food, kai, from local villagers.
Lane Poole made his first journeys to the lowland forests of the coastal regions where the country was better known and controlled. Some of his later journeys were expeditions into the higher country and into regions where white men had not been before. The change was partly a matter of seizing opportunities to make such expeditions as they arose, and partly reflected an increased emphasis that he gave to the scientific dimension of his surveys. Indeed, the expeditions that he mounted in New Guinea, discussed later, had only trivial resource and commercial dimensions.
Assessments in Papua, April–December 1922
Lane Poole arrived in Port Moresby on 7 April 1922 and was helped to organize his journeys in Papua by Staniforth Smith, the Commissioner for Crown Lands, Agriculture and Mines, who had extensive knowledge of the Territory. Over the next eight months Lane Poole made three journeys to locate and assess lowland rainforests and two expeditions into mountainous country in the Upper Era, discussed later.
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Lane Poole conducted his first assessment of lowland rainforests on the banks of the Veimauri and Vanapa Rivers about 70 kilometres north-west of Port Moresby during April and May. He measured 1013 trees of 132 different species along 27 kilometres of strip lines, but when he calculated the volumes, they were disappointing. Although the log volume was a modest 30 cubic metres per hectare, the commercially valuable species made up only 6 percent, so that the area was clearly not suitable for an export operation.28 He collected herbarium specimens of all the species and went on to inspect forests on the Aroa River, a few kilometres further away.
In June he sailed round via Samarai to the small port of Buna on the north-east coast. He spent two months investigating the region of the Kumusi River, the Hydrographer’s Range and Lake Embi. He examined remnant patches of forest in the fertile, grassy plain behind Buna and deduced that it must have been an extensive dipterocarp forest that had been converted to grassland by native agriculture and fires over a long period. He then searched for areas of forest that might have escaped. He assessed one area of lowland rainforest, at Soputa on the edge of the plain, that he found to have fewer and less valuable logs (24 m3 ha
1 of logs of which 2% were valuable species) than the areas he had measured at Veimauri and Vanapa.29 However, he did manage to find some forest on the flood plain of the Kumusi River that had survived because the land was unsuitable for agriculture. His assessment found it to have a higher overall volume (39 m3 ha–1 of logs) but none of the commercially valuable species.30 He then found a 300-hectare patch of what appeared to be virgin rainforest at Sagari with a reasonable volume (53 m3 ha–1 of logs) and some magnificently large trees, but not of the species that the Australian industry wanted for box and plywood manufacture. Again, the results of his assessments showed no prospects of a commercially viable export operation.
In August Lane Poole replenished his supplies and recruited fresh carriers at Buna before investigating some forest at Lake Embi, south of Buna. At last, he felt that he had ‘found some good timber’ and he spent three weeks there to assess it thoroughly along 14 kilometres of strip lines.31 He found that there was a higher volume of logs (57 m3 ha–1) than he had found anywhere before and it was concentrated on two species.32 He concluded that there might be commercial prospects if this type of forest could be found to extend more widely. He was diverted from his commercial brief to investigate some unusual floating islands of vegetation on the lake and to collect herbarium specimens of attractive climbing plants that were in flower at the time. He left Buna on 24 August and walked back to Port Moresby over the Kokoda track, stopping in places to inspect the forest and collect herbarium specimens.
Lane Poole spent September in Port Moresby waiting for news that his third daughter had been born safely in Ireland and preparing for a journey to the Gulf region. He went first to the Baroi River where he assessed a narrow strip of forest that went for 40 kilometres up the river and collected further herbarium specimens. The timber resource (40 m3 ha–1 on forty-five different species) was little different from that at Veimauri and Vanapa.
When he had found so little of interest on the Baroi River, Lane Poole decided to explore higher country heading from the Baroi up the Purari River and then to cross over the mountains to the Vailala River. It was an ill-prepared trip as he had only two police with him and no reasonable map to go by. He met with some local hostility, discovered no forest of interest, and returned safely down the Baroi and on to the Government Station at Kikori. He still needed to explore the higher country, but rather than let him lead another expedition on
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–
his own, R. A. Woodward, the experienced Resident Magistrate in charge there, decided to take him on a well-equipped patrol with a police sergeant, nine constables, two cooks and twenty-four carriers. They aimed to make contact with the people who had been hostile to Lane Poole and then to cross from the head of the Era River to the head of the Purari River. They were away for three weeks and struggled through some of the roughest country that either of them had encountered, only to return down the Era without having found any timber of consequence.33
After these two abortive expeditions, Lane Poole moved to the Vailala River and made another assessment. With sixty-eight different species, it was the most diverse lowland forest he assessed, but commercially it was of no interest (27 m3 ha–1 on 45 species) and he returned to Port Moresby early in January 1923. He had worked hard for nine months, mostly in the lowland rainforests, and had demonstrated that they offered no immediate prospects for an export trade in sawlogs.
Mt Obree to Kagi Expedition, January–February 1923
In Port Moresby, Lane Poole joined forces with Evan Stanley (1885–1924), Papua’s Government Geologist, on an expedition that took them on to the crest of the Owen Stanley Range and enabled Lane Poole to traverse the altitudinal range of forest vegetation.34 The expedition had many things in its favour from the start and turned out to be the most successful of his journeys. Lane Poole and Stanley were the only two people in Papua with scientific training, they were the same age, and most importantly, Stanley had seen pines in the headwaters of the Kemp Welch River on his earlier expedition in 1916. Stanley organized the transport, food, and equipment. After picking up their porters and police from the Government Station at Rigo (50 kilometres south-east of Port Moresby) on 17 January 1923, they travelled along the valley of the Kemp Welch and gradually climbed up the Range into the midmountain forest zone. They established a base camp at 1450 metres on the Laruni Spur of Mt Obree and on 26 January climbed to its top, the altitude of which they recorded at 3100 metres.
The forests on the slopes of Mt Obree were the best that Lane Poole had seen and included hoop pine (A. cunninghamii) and four other conifers (Phyllocladus hypophyllus, Libocedrus pauana, Podocarpus cupressiana and Podocarpus amara). Lane Poole knew hoop pine well from its widespread occurrence in Queensland and northern New South Wales and was interested to find the Phyllocladus that is closely related to Tasmania’s highly prized celerytop pine (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius). He assessed three areas and found that they carried 60 m3 ha–1 of logs, of which over half were conifers, hoop pine being the most plentiful.35 If only the conifer belt spread far enough, he felt that there would be ‘a forest heritage worth looking after’ 36.
Their ascent of Mt Obree and other peaks took them through the mid-mountain forests into the moss forests. Lane Poole found the boundary between these belts to be clearly defined, although as its altitude varied with topography, he considered that better meteorological knowledge would be necessary to sort out the relative influence of humidity, rainfall, temperature, and exposure. He collected some herbarium specimens in the moss forest and noted as curious the presence of xerophytic epiphytes growing together with mosses and ferns on the trunks of the stunted trees. Although the moss forests were normally swathed in clouds and saturated with moisture, he found the one at Mt Obree dry on the day he was there and noted that some areas had been burnt, presumably when there had been two or three dry days together.
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They left their base camp at Laruni on 4 February and for the next two weeks found their way north-west across the headwaters of rivers running out of the Owen Stanley Range, over the ridges between them, and up Mt Urawara on the crest of the main range. It was an exhausting route of climbs and descents that they carefully measured as they went (Fig. 2). On 16 February they reached Minari on the Kokoda trail. They spend a few days there, investigating the geology and forests, and returned to Port Moresby on 20 February.37
Lane Poole spent several weeks in Port Moresby calculating the volumes of his assessments, preparing the detailed records of the species he had collected and drafting his report for the Territory of Papua. He learnt of his appointment to New Guinea for a further year and accepted it, even though it meant another year away from his wife and daughters, the youngest of whom he had never seen. He returned to Australia, visited White and Francis in the Queensland Herbarium, took some recreation leave, and reported to the Department of Home and Territories in Melbourne where it was confirmed that he would be employed for two more years as the Commonwealth’s Forestry Adviser once the New Guinea survey was done. He sailed to Rabaul in October 1923.
New Britain and New Ireland, October 1923
The expedition to Mt Obree with Stanley had shown Lane Poole that the most promising forests were likely to be found in the mid-mountain belt. On arriving in Rabaul, he decided to inspect the lowland forests of New Britain and New Ireland as quickly as he could and then direct his major effort to exploring the higher forests of the main island.
His first journey was to Korindal in New Britain where a sawmill had been built to cut stands of kamarere (Eucalyptus deglupta). It had trees up to 73 metres tall with clean boles to 50
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Figure 2. Altitudes recorded on Mt Obree–Kagi expedition. Note: observations are charted in sequence and are not to a spatial or temporal scale.
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 Sequence Mt Obree Mt Niori Mt Ubu
Rigo 18 Jan Port
Laruni Base
camp,
Jan to 3 Feb 25
Moresby, 20 Feb Nonu
River,
5 Feb Mt Urawara, 10 Feb Kagi Minari, 16 Feb
Tahui River
Oriri Range Moncabi Range
3500
Inimu Creek, 9 Feb
metres; it reminded him of the mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests of Victoria.38 He assessed a remarkable stand at 940 m3 ha–1, but the stands were confined to narrow strips along rivers and streams and were too limited to support an export trade.39 While he was there, he assessed 7 kilometres of strip lines through two areas of rain forest on the nearby Powell River. There were fewer species than he found in similar forests in Papua, but the volume of logs (43 m3 ha–1) was little different.40 Lane Poole had hoped to find it virgin forest but believed it to be regrowth, which caused him to speculate that it might have arisen on land once farmed ‘in the distant past’ or might have regenerated after fire. His observation presages the much later recognition by rain forest ecologists of the importance of rare fires.
In New Ireland, he trekked along the northern part of the island, climbed hills, and went over to the island of Lavongai (New Hanover). He found no forest worth assessing and observed that most of the once considerable forests had been converted to a regrowth of weed trees, scrub, and grass. He was puzzled by Lavongai’s low population density and speculated that either the people must have been overcome by disease, or the island must have been swept by devastating fires.41
Expeditions to Sarawaket and Mt Otto, November 1923 to April 1924
Lane Poole always hoped that ‘some fine day I will come on a grand valley clothed in magnificent forest with a big waterway running through it to carry logs to the mill and the sawn timber to the sea’.42 He also considered that the identification of ‘trees and their range and distribution’ was the most important part of his work, as he ‘should have added many new species and possibly a genus to the world’s flora’.43 These aspects governed his two expeditions in New Guinea. The aim of the first expedition into the Finisterre Range was to ‘cover all possible regions of vegetation from mangrove to Alpine Grass’, and the aim of the second into the Bismark Range was expressed similarly as being to ‘so traverse the country from sea level to the highest possible point as to embrace as wide a range of forest regions as possible’.44 These aims made no mention of the Territories’ need to find the resources for an export trade, and while he still hoped to find his ‘grand valley’, he knew that the lowland forests offered few prospects and that the mid-mountain forests were inaccessible. Nevertheless, he went ahead in pursuit of his scientific aim, apparently without question.
The New Guinea administration provided Lane Poole with police but as there were no opportunities to join other expeditions, as he had with Woodward and Stanley in Papua, he had to organize and lead his own expeditions into difficult country. However, the longestablished German Lutheran Mission with headquarters at Finschhafen provided him with advice, maps, and a mission teacher, Ngezienuc, to accompany him and help organize the carriers on his first expedition. He left Finschhafen on 7 November and headed inland with his police, assistants, cooks and thirty-five carriers. They proceeded steadily for a week through the Mission’s hill-station at Sattelberg and along well-cut tracks, gradually working their way to higher country through a series of villages. As they journeyed, Lane Poole measured altitudes and took notes of the forest, finding hoop pine (A. cunninghamii) and sighting klinki pine (Araucaria hunsteinii), an important conifer, on ridge crests.45 On 14 November they passed over a 2000 metre ridge to Ogeramnang where he thought that the well-cut tracks and ‘a hot lunch of boiled fowl, potatoes and cabbage… speaks volumes for the civilizing influence of the Lutheran mission’.46
Ogeramnang was at the limit of mission influence, so Lane Poole left his spare gear and food there before setting out to climb the Range as lightly as possible. He climbed through difficult limestone country into a high mid-mountain forest that was mixed in patches with
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grass country and a mossy forest at the higher altitudes. He observed that hunting parties had burnt many areas and concluded that this had influenced the patch distribution. On 19 November he reached the top of Mt Sarawaket and enjoyed a magnificent view over the cloud-filled Markham valley. He measured the altitude at 4101 metres, but cloud descended before he could take a round of angles on the distant peaks.47
He collected specimens of any plants he found in flower at the higher altitudes because properly equipped collectors rarely visited these areas. He listed eighty-five species of rhododendrons, bushes, herbs, and trees that he had collected, and sent them to the Queensland Herbarium.48 On the return journey, he assessed a small area of mid-mountain forest at Ogeramnang and found that without hoop pine its volume (33 m3 ha–1) was only about half that of similar forests he had measured at Mt Obree. He also assessed a lower forest at Joangey and another near the Mission, but the results were later destroyed at Kohu. He ended his first expedition on 24 November at Sattelberg where he spent a few days writing up his notes and drying his specimens. The expedition had not found any great forest resource, but it had effectively achieved his objective of inspecting the range of vegetation and it had returned safely.
Before he started on his second expedition, Lane Poole quickly inspected the lowland forest along the coast between Finschhafen and Lae, and in December cut 14 kilometres of lines through a forest near Yalu in the Lower Markham River searching unsuccessfully for the valuable red cedar (Toona australis).49 Although some locals were able to show him three trees, valuable for the best canoes, there was obviously no resource for an export trade and he could turn his attention to mounting his second expedition into the higher lands.
Lane Poole’s second expedition was far longer and more difficult than his first due largely to his undertaking it at the end of the wet season when the low country was flooded, and the rivers were running high and fast. The District Magistrate at Madang may well have tried to dissuade him, but as Lane Poole’s appointment was for a fixed time and he was an incredibly determined man, he would have persisted anyway. He left Madang on 1 February 1924 with a police corporal, three police boys, a few assistants including Peter to look after the herbarium drier, a couple of cooks, and a long line of about fifty carriers. He took a route from the coast to a mission station at Keku, then over a saddle at the western end of the Finisterre Range and through very broken country to the swampy valley of the Ramu. He found the river was 75 to 110 metres wide and he measured it flowing at 16 kilometres an hour. At a miserable campsite plagued by mosquitoes, he went down with fever. He had suffered occasional bouts of malaria since his days in Sierra Leone and dosed himself with quinine. He sent most of the carriers back to Madang to get more rice while his remaining people built a raft with which they tried unsuccessfully to cross the river on 11 February. He had to look for a crossing further up the Ramu and tried to find one a few days later near the mouth of the Boku River only to find the low-lying scrub country under water. For several more days the party trekked across a succession of ridges, rivers, and streams, using whatever trails they could find. On 27 February he arrived at the village of Kohu50 only to find that a party he had sent off for food had returned, claiming that they had been attacked and Waitim killed. Although he did not believe them and Waitim turned up, he had to lead the whole party back to Madang by a different route. After six more days of hard travelling, rain, and river crossings, he arrived there on 5 March. He had travelled hard for five weeks and had achieved virtually nothing apart from a few observations and specimens.
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A less determined or perhaps more prudent man might well have given up, but not Lane Poole. He wrote to his wife that he was ‘often attacked by the horrid feeling of the uselessness of my endeavours’ and was ‘filled with loathing for it all’, yet felt it was up to him to ‘push on’.51 He took only a week in Madang to change over his police, pack fresh supplies, buy axes and adzes, and recruit fresh carriers. He took a route up the Mindjim River, which he found to be madness in the wet season, but finally made his way over the range to the Ramu Valley and back to Kohu on 19 March.52 He pressed on, trying unsuccessfully to find a higher crossing of the Ramu. On the way he found some hoop pines on a mountain side and quickly assessed a strip through them. He returned to Kohu on 30 March and decided that his only hope of forcing a crossing was to make a canoe with the adzes and axes he had brought from Madang. Following his earlier practice at Ogeramnang he packed the minimum he needed to climb the Bismarks and left everything else at Kohu with Peter, a few of the carriers and three police, including the corporal. On 4 April he managed to get the loads and people over the Ramu and could at last explore the higher country.
Four days later Lane Poole, with a policeman and two carriers, climbed through a moss forest to the steep rocky top of Mt Otto only to find that the rain and mist made surveying impossible. When he returned to the Ramu the next day, he learnt that his base camp at Kohu, across the Ramu, had been raided.53 On 10 April he led his party across the Ramu and cautiously entered the deserted Kohu where he found that ‘what the natives did not want they smashed…my diary was gone with all other papers and books, and my negatives and prints I found stamped into the mud…the herbarium had been taken…and the wood specimens too’.54 He found only a few notes, some ammunition and some odds and ends. After trying to catch the culprits, he evacuated to Madang, which he reached on 15 April. The carriers who escaped from Kohu turned up unharmed but without Peter, his herbarium assistant. It eventually appeared that the raid had been in retaliation for the rape of a Kohu woman by some of his police and the interpreter a few days before. Lane Poole never knew whether Peter had been killed or had died in an accident.55
Lane Poole’s second expedition had taken him twelve exhausting weeks, discovered almost nothing of value, and cost him about 200 herbarium specimens and many of the records of his first expedition, including the assessments at Joangey and Ogeramnang. On top of that, he contracted a tropical ulcer that laid him up in Madang for the next two months. He despaired that he might have to return to Australia for treatment, but the ulcer improved in early June, and he was determined to finish his survey of New Guinea, even if only to ensure that he would never have to return should his Australian job be made permanent.56
Sepik River, June–July 1924
Lane Poole finished his New Guinea survey by travelling up the Sepik River. On 26 June he arrived by schooner at the mouth and travelled up to the Roman Catholic Mission at Marienberg. He discussed a small sawmill that the Mission planned for local use and inspected the nearby forest. On 10 July he chartered a small boat to take him up-river, passing and sometimes stopping at villages until he reached the Government station at Ambunti, some 370 kilometres from the mouth of the Sepik. He searched the slopes and crests of the Hunstein Range with his binoculars and went another 100 kilometres up the river. He found nothing of forest interest in the wide swampland with sago palms but inspected and measured the large patches of floating grass that he compared with the floating islands at Lake Embi. On 13 July, he headed back down the river, duly noting the times of his trip in his small field notebook.57 It was the end of his field work in New
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Guinea as he persuaded the authorities in Rabaul that continuing it to Bougainville would be a waste of money.
From Science to Public Policy
The transition from exploitation to science suggested in the title of this paper was followed by an equally ambiguous transition to public policy. This concluding section examines these ambiguities in Lane Poole’s work in the context of the times and his own beliefs.
The first transition was from Burnett’s survey in 1908 to Lane Poole’s survey in 1922–1924. Burnett’s knowledge of the forests was based on his practical experience of working in them, regulating sawmill logging, and inspecting areas for land settlement. His report focused on the opportunities for exploitation and his classification of the trees was based on their timber uses. Lane Poole’s knowledge was based on his tertiary training and subsequent wide experience. His report also deals with exploitation, but his classification of the forests was based on science, using altitude as a proxy for ecology and botany for the trees. The difference reflected the emergent form of Australian forestry that was to be led by a cadre of science graduates, many of whom were to be trained by Lane Poole in the Australian Forestry School.58 He was grossly dismissive of the older Australian foresters who lacked his scientific credentials.59
The transition from exploitation to science within Lane Poole’s surveys is more ambiguous. The chronology of his work shows that he gave his first attention to assessing the immediate opportunities for exploitation and when these proved slim, he emphasised the exploration of the higher lands. However, this was partly a matter of opportunity to join other expeditions in Papua, while in New Guinea he investigated and assessed areas before, during and after the expeditions he led. The scientific content of his work can be seen most clearly in his collecting of herbarium specimens, and their despatch for identification and retention in the Queensland Herbarium. Notably his collection extended beyond the large timber trees and into the understorey species and in places to other plants he found interesting or in flower. The transition can be seen most clearly in his examination of the moss forests that were of no possible timber value, although he was aware of the value of high-altitude forests in protecting catchments. His measurements of altitude, latitude and longitude, and bearings on distant peaks, although conducted in a most scientific manner, contributed more to cartography than anything else. However, his ascent of peaks in mist and rain can only be put down to the culture of Englishmen at the time.
Lane Poole, having finished his fieldwork in July 1924 and taken a joyous holiday reunited with his wife, spent the next months in Melbourne preparing his report. He finished writing it in January 1925 and it was finally printed and presented to Parliament in August 1925, two days before his fortieth birthday. It was not debated and appears to have had little influence on trade or policy at the time. The onset of the Depression meant that trade did not develop, and virtually nothing was done about forestry in Papua and little in New Guinea until the end of the 1930s. It was not until after the Second World War, when Lane Poole had retired, that a Forestry Department was set up to cover the then combined Territories. Nevertheless, the content of these aspects of his report should not be forgotten.
His assessments of the lowland rain forests showed that the low volumes and large number of species per hectare ruled out the commercial prospects for a timber export trade to Australia. Although he had found ‘a host of beautiful timbers, precious woods which should command a price’, he had a sanguine view of Australia where he thought ‘people are too busy to really
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develop a large demand for the very beautiful in the decoration of home life’, while more distant markets were ruled out by the shipping costs.60 Although he had found some conifer resources in the mid-mountain forests, they were on difficult terrain and would be too costly to extract. Lane Poole also considered the timber needs of the Territories but thought that their small needs could be largely met by pit-sawing.
Although assessing the prospects for a timber export industry was Lane Poole’s main task, he also looked at the prospects for exporting other forest products, conventionally named “minor forest products.” Bark that could be used for tanning leather was the most likely prospect and he collected and dried samples from mangroves, oaks, and other species. The Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry’s Forest Products Laboratory in Perth tested his mangrove samples, but the samples had deteriorated in transit and the results were not conclusive.61 He sent the oak (Quercus spp.) samples to I. H. Boas (1878–1955), then Chief Chemist for a Melbourne firm of leather merchants, and they were found to be comparable to the widely used bark of European oak. He had found extensive areas of nipa palm in Papua and thought that the possibility of developing an industrial alcohol industry might be promising, given that the Philippines had already proved that a distillery based on it could be established. He had observed that the local people used plant fibres for many purposes and thought that, like the bark, these might find a place in Australia’s imports. Similarly, he recorded the occurrence of resins, gums, kino, gutta, rubber, oils, dyes, and medicinal plants that might find a market if developed.
Advocating, developing, and applying policies to conserve and manage the forests was a passionate concern and a matter of conscience for Lane Poole throughout his professional life. The imperial model of state forestry implemented by an energetic, scientifically trained cadre of professional foresters, operating on sound forestry principles without political interference, was his ideal. His saw his experience in Western Australia as political interference and an example of the failing of democratic practice to conserve forests. Lane Poole’s final report to Parliament included a section on policy for each of the Territories, the one for Papua having been prepared towards the end of his period there when its first audience was the small group of officials administering the Territory. It is remarkable, even by the freer standards of the time, that it ever appeared in print as it implicitly disparaged the Territory administration and railed against democracy, the foundation of the Parliament to which it was presented. He characterized Papua’s Timber Ordinance (Consolidated) 1909 that had been enacted in Murray’s time as ‘an excellent example of the kind of laws a young democracy passes to ensure the destruction of her natural resources as quickly as possible’.62 While he noted that the Ordinance had been merely copied from old Queensland legislation, the statement was hardly likely to endear him to Murray. He thought that because the ‘Government of Papua is not democratic… it has a chance even in this democratic age of establishing a forest policy that will be appreciated by the people when they have reached the stage of civilization which is expected of them’.63 To counter the argument that a forest policy was not needed when there was so little trade, he conjured up a duty for Papua, ‘as part of the Empire… [to be] …producing their quota or food or raw materials’. While Lane Poole’s attitudes can be seen to reflect his training and background, his expression of them was tactless, to say the least.
He recommended setting up a forest service on a particularly authoritarian version of the imperial model that would give a Conservator of Forests exclusive control of forest policy and complete power to hire and fire the staff. While this proposal rested on his imperial and
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political outlook, he made a series of detailed recommendations for each type of forest in both Territories that rested on the scientific observations of his surveys. For the lowland rain forests, he urged that their minor products should be investigated and developed by industrial chemists, and he believed that the future of forestry there would be being closely related to their development. He recommended that the rain forest along some riverbanks should be converted to pure stands of erima (Octomeles sumatrana). He recommended that the mid-mountain resource of conifers should be increased by planting hoop pine. Although he recognised the difficulty of doing so, he recommended trying to convert some of the unproductive grasslands to plantations of teak (Tectona grandis), an exotic species.64
If we look at Lane Poole’s report from today’s perspective, it is striking how little connection he saw between the forest policies he advocated and any benefits to the indigenous people. This was in spite of the fact that the Administration ‘carefully and wisely safeguarded’ their interests, as he put it, and had health, education and other policies aimed at their well-being. He had recorded many examples of their use of forest plants for food, basic shelters, elaborate communal houses, bridges, fibre, and medicines; he knew that they used the forests to hunt game; and he had praised examples of native forest management. But if we look at the situation from the international forestry perspective of the time, it was the conversion of forest land for agriculture deforestation that had to be countered by strong state policies to conserve and manage the forests wisely for the long term. Although the report was largely focused on wood, the major traded commodity, it did not deny the harvesting and use of all of the other products of the forest; it was simply that they had to be controlled, usually by licensing. Lane Poole followed this by recommending the dedication of permanent forest reserves and the issue of permits to gather forest products.65 He was convinced that the forestry of tree planting and wood conversion that he recommended ‘cannot in any way prove harmful to the native’ and indeed would have a ‘great civilizing effect’.66 Lane Poole’s perspective was one in which he saw an enlightened science conserving the forests against deforestation by tradition and ignorance on one hand, and by the Australian democracy in which he was embedded on the other. Such a science, rigorously applied, would avert environmental deterioration and be of great human benefit.
It was a view of the world that Charles Lane Poole pursued with remarkable diligence and energy in these surveys, and throughout his professional life.
Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to Mrs Charlotte Burston and Mrs Phyllis Hamilton, daughters of Charles and Ruth Lane Poole, who donated their parents’ papers to the National Library of Australia and discussed their parents’ lives with me. I was engaged by the National Archives of Australia to research and write the content for the Uncommon Lives feature in the Archives’ web site on the lives of Charles and Ruth Lane Poole. In doing so, I appreciated working with Kellie Abbott, Kate Bignall, Lenore Coltheart, Fiona Kilby, Merilyn Minell, Tikka Wilson, and Yvonne Wise. I gratefully acknowledge help and advice from Lyn Craven, Martin Golman, Hartmut Holznecht, Laurie Jessop, Wally Johnson, Carol Priestley, Mike Roche, Ray Specht, and Bob Thistlethwaite.
References
The following abbreviations are used throughout the references:
CLP Charles Edward Lane Poole
NAA National Archives of Australia
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NLA National Library of Australia
RLP Ruth Lane Poole
1. C.E. Lane Poole, ‘The forest resources of the Territories of Papua and New Guinea: report,’ Commonwealth of Australia, Papers Presented to Parliament, 2 (1925), Paper 73 [pp. 209], 2687–2896 + maps (hereafter CLP
2. Forest resources with the page numbers 1–209 of Paper 73).
3. National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), MS 3799, Papers of Charles Lane Poole.
4. National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA): A2430, 1941 POL ASS 1, C.E. Lane Poole (hereafter CLP), Letter, addressee unknown, 7 July 1941.
5. NLA: MS 3799/7/243, CLP to Ruth Lane Poole (hereafter RLP), 26 June 1924.
6. CLP’s grandfather (Edward) Stanley Poole (1830
1867) was an Arabic scholar in the British Museum, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb. com.virtual.anu.edu.au/view/article/22522/ 22512/, accessed 7 July 2005). His father, Stanley Edward Lane Poole (1854–1931), was an oriental numismatist and historian, and prolific author. He was Professor of Arabic at Trinity College, Dublin 1898–1904. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb.com.virtual. anu.edu.au/ view/article/35569/, accessed 7 July 2005). His uncle, Reginald Lane Poole (1857–1939), was a medievalist who became Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb.com.virtual.anu. edu.au/view/article/35568/, accessed 7 July 2005). For Charles Lane Poole’s life, see Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne, 1986), Vol. 10, pp. 660–661; Athol Meyer, The Foresters (Hobart, 1985), pp. 3–15; John Dargavel, ‘Charles Lane Poole in the transition from Empire’, in A Forest Conscienceness: Proceedings of the 6th National Conference of the Australian Forest History Society, eds. M. Calver, H. Beigli-Cole, G. Bolton, J. Dargavel, A. Gaynor, P. Horrowitz, J. Milles and G. WardellJohnson (Rotterdam, 2005), pp. 65–74.
7. See J.L. Reed, Forests of France (London, 1954), pp. 63–72.
8. C.E. Lane Poole, Report on the Forests of Sierra Leone (Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1911), Appendix 2.
9. Lewis Lett, Knights Errant in Papua (Edinburgh, 1935), p. 2; W.J. Hudson, Australia, and Papua New Guinea (Sydney, 1971), pp. 1–2.
10. Ferdinand von Mueller, ‘Brief report on Papuan highland plants gathered during Sir William MacGregor’s expedition in May and June 1889’, in British New Guinea: Report of the Administrator for the Period 4th September 1888 to 30th June 1889 (Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1890, XLVIII, C.5897.33)
11. Gilbert Burnett, Timber Trees of the Territory of Papua: Reports and Catalogue (Melbourne, 1908).
12. NAA: A518, DA821/1 (pp. 370, 371) Atlee Hunt, Secretary, Home, and Territories Department, to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 1 July 1918; 30 August 1918.
13. Michael Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry (New Zealand Forestry Corporation), pp. 163–166.
14. NAA: A518, DA821/1 (p. 359) R. McKay Oakley, Acting Deputy Comptroller-General, Department of Trade and Customs, to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 28 September 1920, citing resolution of Interstate Conference of Fruit and Preserves Manufacturers of 30 June 1920; NAA: A518, DA821/1 (pp. 360
363) V.B. Trapp to Atlee Hunt, Secretary Home and Territories Department, 29, 30 July 1920.
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15. NAA: A518, DA821/1 (p. 331), copy of telegram addressed to Honourable Massy Greene by V. Trapp, 11 July 1921.
16. Evan R. Stanley, ‘Report on the salient geological features and natural resources of the New Guinea Territory including notes of the dialects and ethology’ in ‘Report to the League of Nations on the Administration of the Territory of New Guinea from 1st July 1921 to 30 June 1922, Appendix B’. Commonwealth of Australia Papers Presented to Parliament, Paper 18 (1923).
17. NAA: A518, D821/1 (197), J.J. Cummins, Civil Engineer, Brisbane to Prime Minister, 9 January 1922.
18. It was not until 1938 that the Hagen-Sepik Patrol finally crossed the highlands. 18. NAA: A518, DA821/1 (55), Secretary, Department of Home and Territories to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, 17 May 1923.
19. NAA: A1, 1923/25024, Evan R. Stanley, ‘A geological investigation of the unexplored mountain region between Mount Obree and Kagi’, p. 2.
20. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 4.
21. John Dargavel and Damien Moloney, ‘Assessing Queensland’s forests,’ in Australia’s Ever-changing Forests III: Proceedings of the Third National Conference on Australian Forest History, Jervis Bay, Australia, ed. John Dargavel (Canberra, 1997) pp. 74–88.
22. CLP, Forest Resources, p.174.
23. Ibid., p. 201.
24. Bob Thistlethwaite, personal communication, 16 August 2005.
25. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, pp. 72–162.
26. C.T. White and W.D. Francis, ‘Plants collected in Papua by C.E. Lane-Poole’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 38(15) (1926), 225
261; C.T. White and W.D. Francis, ‘Plants collected in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea by C.E. Lane Poole’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 39(6) (1927), 61
70.
27. Laurie Jessop, personal communication, Queensland Herbarium, 28 May 2005.
28. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, tables 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9.
29. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, tables 10, 12.
30. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, table 13.
31. NLA: MS 3799/7/458, CLP to RLP, 10 August 1922.
32. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, table 17.
33. NAA: G91, 375, R.A. Woodward, Kikori Station, Patrol Report 18/22–23, 19 April 1923.
34. NAA: A1, 1923/25024. E.K. Stanley, ‘Geological investigation of unexplored mountain region between Mount Obree and Kagi.’
35. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, tables 24, 25, 26.
36. NLA: MS 3799/7/366, CLP to RLP, n.d. February 1922.
37. Although Lane Poole is now credited in Papua New Guinea with the ‘discovery’ of Eucalyptus tereticornis on Mt Obree and also on the Kokoda Track near Efogi and Launumu (Bob Thistlethwaite, personal communication, 16 August 2005), there is no mention of it in his report or in the Queensland Herbarium records.
38. Lane Poole recorded kamarere by the synonym E naudininana
39. Calculated from CLP, Forest Resources, pp. 55–57.
40. CLP, Forest resources, pp. 61–62.
41. Ibid., p. 62.
42. NLA: MS 3799/7/186–188, CLP to RLP, 15 March 1924.
43. NLA: MS 3799/7/478, CLP to RLP, 12 April 1923.
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44. CLP, Forest Resources, pp. 173, 181.
45. Araucaria hunsteinii was known as A. klinkii in Lane Poole’s time.
46. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 177.
47. His measurement with simple instruments is remarkably close to the current estimate of 4121 m.
48. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 181.
49. Ibid., pp 57–58. Lane Poole recorded it as Cedrella toona var. Australis
50. Kohu is now known by people outside the area as Kesawai 1 (Carol Priestley, personal communication, 7 September 2005).
51. NLA: MS 3799/7/179–188, CLP to RLP, 13
52. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 190.
53. Ibid., pp. 197
54. Ibid., p. 198.
198.
15 March 1924.
55. Ibid., p. i. As the oral history at Kohu as presently known has no account of such a killing, it is most likely that Peter drowned when escaping (Carol Priestly, personal communication, 22 March 2005).
56. NLA: MS 3799/7/ 216, 242–243, CLP to RLP, 5, 26 June 1924.
57. NLA: MS 3799/7/505, CLP Field book, 13 July 1924.
58. L. T. Carron, A History of Forestry in Australia (Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 1985), pp. 258
267.
59. Lane Poole caused great offence to those running the States’ forest services who had learnt their forestry by experience, private study, or in the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick, when he asserted that there were only ten trained foresters in Australia; C.E. Lane Poole, ‘Forestry Position in Australia’, Commonwealth of Australia, Papers Presented to Parliament, Paper 72 (1925).
60. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 171.
61. Ibid., p. 163. The species tested were Bruguiera Rheedii, Rhyzophora mucronata and Xylocarpus granatum.
62. Ibid., p. 45.
63. Ibid., p. 45.
64. The German administration had planted teak in plots near Madang on the north coast and Kokopo in New Britain (Bob Thistlethwaite, personal communication, 16 August 2005), but Lane Poole does not report having seen them.
65. CLP, Forest Resources, p. 46.
66. Ibid., p. 6
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John d’Espeissis TPNG Eminent Forester 1938-1940
In 1938, John d’Espeissis resigned from the Western Australian Forest Department to join the TPNG Department of Forests (controlled by the Federal Government).
John was the second of two permanently appointed forest officers in New Guinea. He was stationed in Rabaul East New Britain. National Archives /Trove Item ID, A518, 852/1/671, New Guinea Staff - J L d'Espeissis - Forest Officer. Access status: Open, Location: Canberra, 1937 - 1940, 108419
However48, John d’Espeissis’ son – John d’Espeissis research advised that from his father’s notes of 1938: In 1938, John resigned (Forestry Dept W.A.) to go to New Guinea. Jim McAdams and he were the first permanent forestry officers appointed to the forestry of NG.
Jim who was a year before him at AFS was the senior, but he remained behind to get married and arrived six months later. In the meantime, John managed to get adopted the new forestry legislation for the Territory based on Lane Poole’s Act for W.A. While John d’Espeissis remained in Rabaul at HQ Jim McAdam went to Wau on the mainland to develop the Hoop Pine areas in particular.”
He goes on to say in the hand written notes, “In 1940 John d’Espeissis resigned to join the British Colonial Forestry Service as Assistant Conservator of Forests Fiji. (He had been there as a teenager and wanted to return). Once again, John d’Espeissis succeeded in using the W.A. Forest Act as a model for the new legislation there.
The above clarifies the relevance of John d’Espeissis work in the further development of TPNG forest legislation.
John d’Espeissis early student days.
Source d’Espeissis family album.
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48 Personal communication John d’Espeissis (son of forester John d’Espeissis) 29th Sept 2023.
“JB” James Bannister McAdam MM 1910-1959 was a graduate of University of Queensland and Australian Forestry School. (dux in 1932/33). In 1934, he joined Queensland Forestry. In 1938 he joined the TPNG administration and made Chief Forester 1939.
With the threat of war in the Pacific, McAdam enlisted in the NGVR. After the Japanese invaded Salamaua in March, he led a party of scouts which established an observation post within a mile (1.6 km) of enemy positions. McAdam acted as a guide in the foray and was awarded the Military Medal for his outstanding service at Salamaua.
From 1944/45 he was Lt Col 1 Aust CRE (New Guinea Forests). In 1946 he became Director of Forests TPNG. He died in 1959.
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Jim “JB” McAdam MM. First Director of the Dept of Forests TPNG49 .
Photo Credit Ian Whyte McAdam Park Wau 1975 49 Refer PNGAF Mag Issue # 3 of 30th Oct 2020 Jim McAdam’s story.
Bill Suttie Second Director TPNG Forests
After graduating from the Australian Forestry School, in 1932 Bill joined the Queensland Department of Forestry. He was a founding member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia in 1935.
During the second world war, he was in command of 1 Australian Forestry Survey Coy in Papua New Guinea. This was under 1 Command Royal Engineers (New Guinea Forests) as the Headquarters Unit, with J B McAdam (head of prewar New Guinea Forest Service) as commanding officer, with 1 Australian Forestry Survey Coy, with W R Suttie (Queensland) in command and the 2 Australian Forestry Survey Coy, with A E Head (Victoria) in command. They began in January 1944, and the units were able to function in May 1944
LT Carron in his book on Australian Forestry described the purpose of these Forest Survey Companies in PNG. Their 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. The units were gradually phased out towards the end of 1945, after the war in the south-west Pacific had ended.
After the war, he held several positions with the Department of Forestry in Queensland, the last being District Forester Atherton in North Queensland until he resigned in 1956 to join the Department of Forests in the Territory of Papua New Guinea.PNG. Here, he rose to be the second Director of Forests in PNG. After retiring from TPNG he lived at Caloundra until his death in 1982.
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Don McIntosh 1927 -2015 joined Forests PNG in 1948 as a cadet forester. After graduating in 1952, he held positions included Regional Forest Officer Lae, Chief of Forest Management before becoming the third Director of Forests in the Dept of Forests PNG.
Don’s military service was in the Royal Australian Navy Service Number S10526, home port Sydney NSW with the rank of Able Seaman. He enlisted on 31 May 1945 and was discharged on 6 January 1947 (most fitting defence service for sailing the political seas of forestry later in his career) After completing his studies at the Australian Forestry School Canberra 1950-51, under the TPNG Forestry cadetship scheme where his classmates included Ted Gray and Kevin White, Don returned to PNG.
50He was responsible for greatly increasing natural forest assessment with trials using helicopters as transport in the Gogol area in 1963.
50 Eric Hammermaster personal communication 11 April 2019
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Don McIntosh Third Managing Director TPNG Dept of Forests 1970-75
Presentation of Certificates Bulolo Forestry College. November 1966. L to R. Don McIntosh Director Department of Forests; Sir Leslie Johnson CBE Assistant Administrator TPNG; Horrie Niall Morobe District Commissioner; Leon Clifford Acting Principal Bulolo Forestry College. Photo Credit Janelle Clifford 7/4/20
Kevin White Assistant Director TPNG Forests 1970-1977
Kevin 1924-2012 joined TPNG forests in 1957. He completed the first stage of secondary education in 1941 and then worked for a spell in the Queensland Public Service in Brisbane, enlisting in the AIF in 1942 (QX57633/Q144919) He shipped out to New Guinea where he was taken on by 39 Light Wireless Air Warning Section as an electrician and later returned to Australia for radio technician training Back in New Guinea he was attached to the 2nd Australian Corps Signals at the transmitter centre on the Sattelburg trail above Finschhafen, and later at Torokina on Bougainville. There at Torokina Kevin celebrated his 21st birthday and the end of the Pacific war.
After his discharge (26 Sep 1946), he re-joined the Queensland Public Service but opted for retraining under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. He firstly completed his secondary schooling and then became a Cadet Forest Officer of the Queensland Department of Forestry His four-year degree entailed two years at the University of Queensland followed by two years at the Australian Forestry School in Canberra, graduating with Dip. For. in 1951 and B.Sc. (For.) in 1952.
The next five years were largely spent on rainforest management research in North Queensland, partly at the Forest Research Station at Atherton, where he became familiar with many of the species of the rainforest flora, established a large botanical collection, and discovered new species He, along with his boss Eddie Volck, were honoured by Dr Lindsay Smith, Queensland Government Botanist, by naming one of the tree species from the vicinity of Kuranda as Neorites kevediana (Fishtail silky oak) (Proteaceae).
Kevin transferred to the Forest Department of the Territory of Papua & New Guinea in 1957 as Assistant Botanist and Plant Ecologist at the Botany Division of the Department in Lae rising to Assistant Director Dept of Forests PNG. After PNG he undertook various consultancies including FAO Bangladesh and ADB Nepal.
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Eulogy by Rex Wiggins51
Kevin Joseph White or, as many of us addressed Kevin, just K.J. In the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, it would be Papa bilong Lapegu
Our paths first crossed back in 1958 when I made a trip from Bulolo in PNG to take in the bright lights of Lae for the first time. A group of forestry personnel gathered at the Lae Club and amongst them Kevin, who was at the time in charge of the Lae Botanical Gardens.
I was single at the time, and it was much easier to move singles around than married couples. It was not long before I found myself transferred to Lae where I met my wife to be Anne.
Kevin had moved back to Headquarters in Port Moresby but was a regular visitor to all the outstations in his official capacity as Chief of Division Silviculture, so we got together on many occasions in Lae and later, when Anne and I moved to Rabaul. Following my permanent relocation to Port Moresby some years after, Kevin visited our home quite often and we reciprocated having meals at his and a close bond developed which has lasted more than fifty years. I can still see the array of food warming receptacles brimming with curries and seafood and his houseboi Glass hovering round as we sat at Kevin’s teak dining table
they were great times.
Kevin’s contribution to the reforestation of PNG forests and to the training of local forestry personnel has been clearly demonstrated and I leave it to the words of the current Managing Director of the Papua New Guinea Forest Authority Mr. Kanawi Pouru and I quote: “The late Kevin White was a professional colleague who had dedicated a good part of his life in Papua New Guinea to help build and establish a strong foundation for a future National Forest Service as part of the national preparedness program leading towards Independence in the mid-seventies. He was a great forester and an administrator that made a huge contribution to shaping the future direction of PNG’s forest management and development.” End of quote.
Many of Kevin’s colleagues and friends have responded to his passing with emails and phone calls expressing condolences. Such was this person who made friends easily, readily gave advice, guidance and instruction and I would like to quote again, this time from Professor Simon Saulei. “I am fortunate to be trained by Kevin during the period when some of us where selected to undergo Forestry Cadetship tenure. We, Oscar Mamalai, Dike Kari, Joe Ben and later joined by Jack Noah underwent a series of field exercises with Kevin including Gogol, Open Bay, Omsis, and Bevani forest areas,” End of quote,
Simon attended UPNG and says that he visited Kevin at HQ who then provided information, especially books and manuals and when he graduated and joined forestry, he met up with Kevin in Thailand at various FAO Forestry meetings. This typifies the strong leaning that Kevin had for educating local officers in the field of forest management.
Following Independence in 1975, Kevin took a position with United Nations FAO and carried out work for a period in Bangladesh advising on plantation management. On completion of this project, he moved to Nepal and commenced work on a plant nursery at Sagarnath in the Terai, establishing eucalypt plantations that proved successful and he had a great delight in showing me, when I visited, the use of his thinnings from the plantations for electric light poles in various towns and villages. The timber was also a great and necessary resource as firewood and scaffolding. It was here that Kevin teamed up with his mate Bhagirath Sharma and together they collected, photographed, and published the book “Wild
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51 Personal communication Rex Wiggins 10 April 2019 and Bob Thistlethwaite 13 March 2018
Orchids in Nepal” which is a fine achievement given the terrain that had to be covered to obtain the material and take quality photographs – this book is here on display.
Kevin was well known throughout South East Asia as a forestry advisor to governments and earned a high level of respect for the work that he accomplished and was very keen to pass on his knowledge to up-and-coming local professionals in his field. Many forestry students, especially from PNG, Nepal, Cambodia, and Laos kept in contact with Kevin and after he retired to Thailand he was forever advising and editing their assignments and theses.
The letters of appreciation and plaques from various authorities also displayed here speak for themselves and are testament to the work that Kevin undertook in developing countries and the commitment he gave to achieve the results that he did accomplish. Kevin undertook considerable research into the growing of teak in Asia which earned him the title TeakWallah in some quarters.
We, as a family arrived in Brisbane late 1978 and it was not long after that Kevin contacted me to see if I would look after his financial affairs here in Australia and so our association developed further.
After my wife passed away in 1996, it was Kevin who suggested that I visit him in Thailand with view of us undertaking some travel into some of the more remote areas of S.E. Asia and so it eventuated that over the past 15 years there was usually a trip each year somewhere off the tourist track quite often involving extremely basic transport and accommodation, but Kevin obviously enjoyed such trips. I would get a running commentary of the flora as we motored up the Mekong in Laos or have orchid trees pointed out to me in Sabah and Kevin was always a wealth of knowledge when it came to wandering through markets where he was keen to explain the origin and attributes of unusual fruits and vegetables.
I visited Kevin several times at his unit in the condominium in Jomtien Thailand and for years I would see reams of paper, photographs, slides etc. as Kevin laboured on his last major project - the White Family History. The results of many years gathering information, travelling to Ireland, the UK. USA and Australia are also displayed here in memory of a great achievement and something the White Family will surely treasure.
Kevin dearly loved to go to the small island of Koh Samet which entailed an hour’s drive to the fishing town of Ban Phe and then a 40-minute ferry run to the island. The tranquil setting, the wonderful restaurants at the water’s edge and basic accommodation was the ideal place for Kevin to spend time relaxing and editing his many research manuscripts. Kevin has been a great friend to myself and my family over the years and in fact, one of the family, a wonderful travelling companion and I will sadly miss his dry sense of humour, his quick wit and most definitely the vast knowledge he possessed on the history of S E Asia which he readily passed onto me. Kevin always travelled with a book and usually this was of a historical nature and related to the country we were visiting. I must say I cannot think of an occasion where I have seen Kevin reading a book of fiction.
His life has been most interesting and varied and his travels have taken him to all corners of the globe. His work and achievements in the forestry field must have been extremely rewarding to himself and the legacy he has left behind will continue through the graduates that he guided. A job well done Kevin, rest in peace my friend.
Vale Kevin Joseph White by Bob Thistlethwaite. Source IFA publication The Forester Volume 56 No 1 March 2013
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Kevin Joseph White (Kev or just K.J. to many) died on 28 Jun 2012 at Pinjarra Hills, Brisbane. He was born on 15 Apr 1924 in Marrickville, Sydney. His family home was at Wyong (north of Sydney) where his father had a dairy and mixed grain farm By 1930 the family had moved to North Queensland where his father pioneered a tobacco farm (on Tinaroo Creek, some 13 km from Mareeba) and subsequently grew sugar cane on the Upper Mulgrave Valley (about 11 km by road from Gordonvale).
He completed the first stage of secondary education in 1941 and then worked for a spell in the Queensland Public Service in Brisbane, enlisting in the AIF in 1942 (QX57633/Q144919) He shipped out to New Guinea where he was taken on by 39 Light Wireless Air Warning Section as an electrician and later returned to Australia for radio technician training. Back in New Guinea he was attached to the 2nd Australian Corps Signals at the transmitter centre on the Sattelburg trail above Finschhafen, and later at Torokina on Bougainville. There at Torokina Kevin celebrated his 21st birthday and the end of the Pacific war.
After his discharge (26 Sep 1946), he re-joined the Queensland Public Service but opted for retraining under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme He firstly completed his secondary schooling and then became a Cadet Forest Officer of the Queensland Department of Forestry. His four-year degree entailed two years at the University of Queensland followed by two years at the Australian Forestry School in Canberra, graduating with Dip. For. in 1951 and B.Sc. (For.) in 1952.
The next five years were largely spent on rainforest management research in North Queensland, partly at the Forest Research Station at Atherton, where he became familiar with many of the species of the rainforest flora, established a large botanical collection, and discovered new species. He, along with his boss Eddie Volck, were honoured by Dr Lindsay Smith, Queensland Government Botanist, by naming one of the tree species from the vicinity of Kuranda as Neorites kevediana (Fishtail silky oak) (Proteaceae).
Kevin transferred to the Forest Department of the Territory of Papua & New Guinea in 1957 as Assistant Botanist and Plant Ecologist at the Botany Division of the Department in Lae, and in 1958 oversaw the Lae Botanic Gardens He continued to work with the Department of Forests for 20 years in various capacities as a Silvicultural Research officer, Assistant Director (Research & Development) and, prior to his departure in 1977, as Acting Director of the Department.
Kevin was responsible for establishing the Bulolo Forestry School (now the Bulolo Campus of the University of Technology) and was actively involved in the development of the Degree course in Forestry at the University of Technology at Lae He was awarded the Imperial Service Order on 11 June 1977 “For Faithful Service”, and in 2000 was honoured by the Governor General of Papua New Guinea “For contribution in services to the development of Papua New Guinea” commemorating 25 years of PNG Independence.
Kevin made a major contribution to forestry development in PNG, especially through the training of local forestry personnel, a process he commenced long before self-government’s drive for localisation of government administration It was that core of professionally qualified staff who became the backbone of forestry administration post-independence and the later National Forest Service. The Managing Director of the PNG Forest Authority, Kanawi Pouru, wrote “The late Kevin White was a professional colleague who had dedicated a good part of his life in Papua New Guinea to help build and establish a strong foundation for a future National Forest Service as part of the national preparedness program leading towards Independence in the mid-seventies. He was a great forester and an administrator that
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made a huge contribution to shaping the future direction of PNG’s Forest Management and Development.”
In 1977 Kevin left PNG and commenced work on international projects, firstly on an FAO project in Bangladesh to rehabilitate the Forest Research Centre at Chittagong This was followed by a six-year Asian Development Bank-funded eucalypt plantation project in Nepal at Sagarnath in the Terai where he trained 80 forestry technicians. The plantations supplied thinnings for electric light poles and for scaffolding and were also a necessary and valued firewood resource. He maintained contact over the next 20 years regularly visiting Sagarnath and other areas of Nepal, a country he had come to love After the close of the ADB project he became an independent consultant providing services to China, Cambodia, Bhutan, Indonesia, and Brazil and maintained forest interests in many Asian countries. During the 1990-1991 period while working in Cambodia, he lectured in Forest Ecology at Champadong University in Phnom Penh.
Kevin undertook considerable research into teak silviculture in Asia and contributed widely to the development of teak plantations there and in Brazil. He maintained a keen interest in Eucalyptus silviculture and was also a staunch advocate for Dalbergia sisoo and Pterocarpus indicus which he championed as species that are readily propagated and appropriate for village production systems, and with a wide range of end uses from furniture to firewood.
Kevin was well known throughout South East Asia as a Forestry Adviser and earned a high level of respect for the work that he accomplished He always was concerned to pass on his knowledge to local professional foresters. Many forestry students from Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Cambodia, and Laos kept in contact with Kevin and after he retired to Thailand he was forever advising and editing their assignments and theses. The letters of appreciation and plaques from various authorities testify to the work that Kevin undertook and his achievements.
He had a passion for orchids, collected extensively, and co-authored “Wild Orchids in Nepal” with Bhagirath Sharma, a close friend. This was a fine achievement considering his age and the terrain that had to be traversed to obtain the material and take quality photos.
Kevin was always ready to provide advice, guidance and instruction to those upcoming forestry professionals who sought it and is fondly regarded by many from PNG to Nepal for his generosity of time and resources in this regard. Professor Simon Saulei (University of Vudal) wrote that he was fortunate to be trained by Kevin during his Forestry Cadetship. Simon attended UPNG and when he visited Forestry HQ at Hohola, Kevin freely provided him with books, manuals, and other information. This was typical of Kevin in his drive to foster the tertiary education of local officers.
Kevin was a sociable person who made friends easily He had a quick wit and subtle sense of humour, coupled with a certain panache. His BBQs were notable. Not for Kevin some rustic rough and ready affair, eating off a paper plate and drinking out of a plastic cup; out in the middle of the bush in an idyllic setting you were confronted with a 25 kg bag of green prawns, scallops, oysters, fish, steaks and other goodies, a table covered with crisply starched white tablecloth, crystal goblets, silver wine buckets, rafts of ice-cold refreshments and all the trimmings and, of course, wood fired BBQs! And as for Kev’s dinners and Australia Day parties.... memorable affairs!
His life has been most interesting and varied and his travels have taken him to all corners of the globe His forestry achievements in PNG and SE Asia are his legacy, one which will live on through the graduates he guided.
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ACRONYMS
ACT Australian Capital Territory
AEC Administrators Executive Committee
AFS Australian Forestry School
AFPNG Association of Foresters of PNG
AIF Australian Infantry Forces
AMF Australian Military Forces
ANBG Australian National Botanical Gardens
ANGAU Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit
ANU Australian National University
APMF Australian Paper Manufacturers Forestry Pty Ltd
APPM Australia Paper and Pulp Manufacturers
ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
ASOPA Australian School of Pacific Administration
BCOF British Commonwealth Occupational Force 1945-52
“Beer Time” Any time.
BFC Bulolo Forestry College
BGD Bulolo Gold Dredging Company
BUC Bulolo University College
C Commonwealth cm Centimetre
CALM Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management
CFA Commonwealth Forestry Association
CNGT Commonwealth New Guinea Timbers Bulolo
CRE Commander Royal Engineers
CRE CRE is a term inherited by RAE from RE and is the term for the Commanding Officer of a RAE unit which is headed by a Lt Col. Although the officer is called the CRE the name is also used for the name of his unit. E.g., CRE Aust Forestry Group or 1(NG Forests).
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
CHAH Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria
DASF Dept of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries
DEPT Department
DOF Department of Forests
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation
F &TB Forest and Timber Bureau Canberra
FPRC Forest Products Research Centre Hohola
Forkol Bulolo Forestry College
GIS Geographic Information Systems
ha Hectare
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
IFA Institute of Foresters of Australia
ITTO International Tropical Timber Organization
L of N League of Nations
m3 cubic metre MM Military Medal
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NAA National Archives Australia
NARI National Agriculture Research Institute
NB New Britain
no. Number
NG New Guinea
NGF New Guinea Forces (relates to plant collection of Lae Herbarium)
NGIB New Guinea Infantry Battalion
NGVR New Guinea Volunteer Rifles
NZ New Zealand
NSW New South Wales
P or p page
PIB Papuan Infantry Battalion
PIR Pacific Islands Regiment
PNG Papua New Guinea
PNGAA Papua New Guinea Australia Association
PNGAF Papua New Guinea Australian Foresters Magazine Series
PNGFA Papua New Guinea Forest Authority
PNGFIA PNG Forest Industries Association
PNGRIS Papua New Guinea Resource Information System
PNGUT PNG University of Technology
POM Port Moresby
Q Queensland
QF Queensland Forestry
RAE Royal Australian Engineers/Australian Army
RPC Royal Papuan Constabulary
SFM Sustainable Forest Management
SP South Pacific
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
Unasylva Journal of FAO of UN
UNE University of New England Armidale NSW
UNI University
UNITECH University of Technology Lae PNG
UNRE University of Natural Resources and Environment
UPNG University of Papua New Guinea
UQ University of Queensland
US United States
USA United States of America
TPNG Territory of Papua and New Guinea
TUBL Territory United Brewery Ltd
TA
TA
TRP
Timber Area
Timber Authority
Timber Rights Purchase
VSF Victorian School of Forestry
WA Western Australia
WB World Bank
WW2 WORLD WAR 2
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