On a former dairy farm in Western Australia’s south, a small fortune is growing in plain sight.
“That’s about $2,000 worth of wood,” Geoff North said as he placed a hand on the blackened bark of a towering eucalyptus tree.
Mr North is reaping the rewards of decades of patience at his Walpole plantation, 400 kilometres south of Perth, with prices for his timber doubling in the past 12 months following the state government’s ban on logging in native forests.
Mr North started growing hardwood trees in Walpole in the early 90s. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
Unlike blue gum plantations that grow trees destined for the pulp mill, Mr North grows hardwood trees including blackbutt, spotted gum and Sydney blue gum that are sold to sawmills.
The timbers are prized for their durability and aesthetic appeal making them useful as both a building material and a finishing wood for architectural cladding and floorboards.
Playing the long game
For years, the West Australian tree farmer has patiently and methodically cultivated hundreds of thousands of trees in preparation for their eventual felling.
Blackbutt is one of the hardwood species Mr North grows on his farm. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
But the process has taken decades of monotonous and painstaking work.
“You don’t set out planting trees without positivity in the first place, you’ve got to get yourself wet and dirty,” Mr North said.
“In the early 90s, my family and I set out to plant trees for long rotation, sawlog crops, and we did that over 20 to 25 years, planting over 350,000 trees.”
Saplings no bigger than a pencil when they were first planted now stand up to 50 metres tall with a base as thick as a wine barrel.
Young saplings have been planted where mature trees have been harvested. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
Ban leads to price rise
Mr North said the straightness and uniformity of the trees was the by-product of regular culling that ensured only the best-reached harvest age.
“Everywhere you don’t see a limb, a limb was removed,” he said.
The intensive process has paid dividends with Mr North selling his timber to sawmills at a premium.
“The prices that you can get for high-value sawlogs these days is not just a reflection of supply, but also the demand for high-value logs,” Mr North said.
Mr North says the price of hardwood timber has doubled in the past 12 months. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
With a combined 250 hectares of native forest and a long rotation plantation, Mr North said harvesting up to 2,000 tons of hardwood a year represented a sustainable yield.
But he said placing a cap on what could be harvested went beyond profitability.
“We fell in love with tree farming and realised down the track that we have plenty of benefits,” he said.
“The best way to fight climate change is to basically put carbon pumps in the land, which is what trees are.”
Spotted Gum is a highly desirable timber for its use in flooring and furniture making. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
Native wood trickling in
While a handful of privately owned forests and plantations are experiencing an increased demand for their timber, others are struggling with the overall decline in available wood.
The WA government’s ban on native logging came into effect on January 1, preventing native hardwood trees like karri and jarrah which had been used for flooring, furniture, firewood, from being chopped down and sold commercially.
Victoria also banned native timber logging in state forests from the same date.
WA Forest Industries Federation chief executive Adele Farina said all mills had been impacted by the end of native logging in the WA, but limped on by processing small volumes of timber from forest thinning programs.
Adele Farina says not enough timber is making its way to WA mills. (Supplied: Forest Industries Federation WA)
“There has definitely been an impact, mills are struggling to find large logs, but some is trickling through,” she said.
“Most of it is small diameter saw logs that will end up as firewood,” she said.
Alan Basada says the demand for hardwoods is outstripping the domestic supply. (ABC Great Southern: Andrew Chounding)
Ms Farina said contracts awarded by the state government for thinning around mine sites would provide some relief, but said some customers had already started importing foreign hardwoods.
Alan Basada who buys and sells milled hardwood to customers in the mining and maritime industry said he started importing Asian timber with similar properties to Jarrah in a bid to fill orders.
“There are people who are desperate, they would pay good money for those [domestic] logs,” he said.
“I’ve got lots of orders to fill but I can’t because I don’t have the logs.”
