The Old Timber Mill: A. Mann / R. Rummery

For a hundred years or so, Western Australia supplied quality hardwood timber to the rest of Australia and the world.  As some mills got bigger many small operations were shut down and were abandoned.  The scarcity of trees has compounded this in later years, with an impact on the lives of many rural workers.

The Old Timber Mill

At the bend in the track, where she winds ‘round the hill

Half a mile from the river, stands the old timber mill

The valley is so quiet, you can hear the rush of wind

Where once the timber tumbled, to the saw-bench and the twins

The saw-blade still and silent, has grown a film of rust

Cobwebs link the belt-drive to a bench that’s thick with dust

Where once a pile of logs, lay stretched out to die

I see the bark floor rotting, and oat-grass four foot high

CHORUS

The smoke and the sawdust,  the sound of the saw

Have gone now forever, the old mill is no more

There’s a little row of houses, all faced with weather-boards

Idle in the sunshine, cryin’ shame and cryin’ fraud

For the folks that once filled them, are somewhere else today

Searchin’ for a dwelling, and searching for their pay

Out in the forest, the mill line’s just a path

Through thickets of dryandra, here and there an epitaph

A sleeper worn and weary, crumbled and decayed

Remembers line and loco, the drivers and the grade

I find that pastured paddocks, and fields of “English” green

Are barren ‘spite their colour, and I find I often dream

Of a forest full of karris, to the top of the hill

Of a row of timber houses, and the old timber mill