It seems that the greatest miracle of the Hydrowood agenda is that it has been able to combine hydro and forestry – two of the most divisive industries in Tasmania’s history – and put no-one’s nose out of joint.
There are few scenes in nature more striking than the dark rivers of western Tasmania, fringed by a prolific tangle of thick shades of green.
As these streams flow through the high country moorlands and forests, they pick up tannin compounds that leave the water stained. It’s like tea, you will often be told – but here on Lake Pieman, it’s as black as ink.
The lake is actually an impoundment along the Pieman River catchment; a hydroelectric dam on its northern end squeezed the river’s volume beyond its original banks, drowning stands of various trees adapted to the west’s higher altitudes and rainfalls. I am on a survey boat called Persephone as she weaves her way through the upper-most remnants of these dead trees, gothic stags like arms reaching from the depths.
In a sense it’s relevant that the vessel should be named after a mythological Queen of the Underworld, for it is a part of an innovative endeavour to retrieve what lies beneath the surface of these tenebrous waters. A unique forestry company, Hydrowood, has come up with a way to harvest the timber left behind in this altered landscape.
On the boat, a sonar map shows what is known about the underwater topography. In areas, it may come close to 100 metres deep, but there are unseen branches everywhere sticking up like shards. Rounding a bend in the old river’s course, we come upon the harvesting in operation: an excavator pivots on a barge, leans forward, plunges into the black, grips a tree, and hoists it out. It’s a muscular process, and observing it from nearby is like watching a wrestling match. Or like watching a fisherman try and catch a big shark. As the noise subsides, a debris of soft brown chips rises.
Meanwhile, a hefty log has been flung onto another floating deck attached to the excavator’s barge. With an unlikely dexterity, the harvester will stack a couple dozen logs over the course of a half-day’s work. Adapted from terrestrial logging vehicles, the excavator has a chainsaw built into the head. The problem, of course, is that nothing much can be seen. It’s all under the dark water. The handful of Hydrowood operators talk of the feel of the robotic grip on each individual tree trunk. As with anything that relies on getting used to what something should feel like, there were some rather costly mistakes.
The colours of the exposed timber are remarkable. There are beautiful shades of cream and pink. This is lovely wood; pleasing on the eye. In a messy pyramid I can see myrtle, celery-top and sassafras; there are a couple of eucalyptus species in there too. An observer might expect more huon pine through here, but when the Reece Dam was constructed 30 years ago, authorities quickly logged whatever huon they could before the water levels made it impossible. “About 80 per cent of the original timber is still here,” I’m told, “but about 80 per cent of the huon is gone.”
On the banks at the end of the Argent Track, just beyond the town of Rosebery, Hydrowood has set up a shanty-type base. Off to the side of the accumulation of logs, there is indeed some twisted huon sitting in a small pile. One chunk has been tested and tagged as being about 10,000 years old – that is, having fallen after a millennium of life, it has lain without rotting for another nine millennia. It is well-known that huon pine is impervious to rot, due to its high content of an oil known as methyl eugenol. But what elicits more surprise from those watching Hydrowood closely is that there are so many other species that are in good nick after three decades underwater.
Counterintuitive as it may be, it seems possible that the secret of the timber’s preservation lies in the darkness of the water – fewer ultraviolet rays are getting through to quicken the process of decay. There is also a minimum of oxygen, which speeds up decay, and there are fewer wood-consuming organisms present.
Whatever the case, the result is that a number of specialty timbers are available in a quantity that hasn’t been seen for years. These trees are generally slow-growing, and almost entirely concentrated in areas of high conservation value which have been reserved from logging activity. Some of these trees have consequently been ‘forgotten’ as workable timbers. At the Wynwood mill on the north-west coast, Stuart Snare gives me a telling estimate: “When it comes to celery-top, each week we’re harvesting what they’ve been getting in a year.”
At a bar in the old hydro town of Tullah, I end up chatting with an old woodworker who talks me through his preferences for different timbers. There’s plenty of excitement in the possibility of working with what’s being yanked out of the lake, even if some locals expressed a reasonable cynicism to begin with. Craftspeople from Tassie and the mainland are paying good money for the salvaged timber, and turning the trees into high-end furniture, boat-building, decking, veneering, and other purposes.
Up at Wynwood, I watch lengths of timber being sawn into luxurious cuts for boat-building. Approaching these logs is a little different for the mill workers; grading the quality of the timber is different than from the products of terrestrial logging. Having been dead and submerged for some years, the sap is gone. Now exposed, the wood oxidises rapidly and “the ageing process occurs quickly”, according to Stuart Snare. But the Wynwood workers are relishing the chance to see specialty timbers come through their mill again, and to adapt the traditional timber-workers’ skills, which have been such a part of the Tasmanian identity since the earliest days of British colonisation.
For the ecologically-conscious, it’s a relief to see all these logs and be able to feel that very little has been disrupted for it to be harvested. Environmental analysis found little to oppose; while the creation of the impoundment itself has wrought ecological change, there is a minimum of impact in taking the timber itself. The wood is lovely to look at, and to touch.
It seems that the greatest miracle of the Hydrowood agenda is that it has been able to combine hydro and forestry – two of the most divisive industries in Tasmania’s history – and put no-one’s nose out of joint.
“In a sense, this is not sustainable,” company director David Wise tells me. “We can’t keep doing this.” He means that once the timber is taken out of Lake Pieman, there aren’t more rainforest trees growing back out of the submerged earth. But it’s not unsustainable, in the way we usually approach the word: it isn’t going to destroy bird habitats or leave us with monoculture forests.
Even the impact on human uses of the area are minimal. Lake Pieman is, I’m told, the 60th-most popular fishing lake on the island. “That was one of its appeals,” David smiles. Perhaps some will miss the ominous sight of gaunt dead trees sticking out of the black lake, but most locals seem to agree with Hydrowood visionaries that the lake is aesthetically improved by their removal.
In terms of the longevity of their operations, Hydrowood is bullish about the future. “We can get five or so years out of it,” David says cheerfully, and that’s looking at about 80,000 tonnes of timber. They are already in the process of surveying other lakes, but each will provide its own challenges. I have a suspicion, though, that Hydrowood is a small cohort of individuals who appreciate a challenge.
While other operators, particularly in North America, salvage logs, the tactic of actually cutting them underwater is a little bolder. “We think the only other underwater harvesting operation in the world is in French Guinea,” I’m told. There were plenty of unknowns, then, when they started feasibility studies at Lake Pieman five years ago. Even now, after more than a year of logging the lake, you get the feeling there’s plenty left undiscovered: not just timber, but technique and technology.
It might seem unlikely to find a modified excavator floating on this otherwise empty dam, but beyond the innovation, there is an old story: Tasmanians are once again adapting to their unique environment in original ways. Timber has long been important to us, but we’ve so often gone about harvesting it in a manner that jeopardises the future of our special places and the species that need them, including ourselves. Thankfully, we are now paying a little more attention to the future.
There will be some lucky woodworkers who get to use these rare local timbers for their craft, at least for a time, and that seems about as close to a spiritual and ritual act as anything I can imagine.
This article was first published in issue 84 of Forty South magazine.
Bert Spinks writes poetry, and poetic prose, about wilderness. He has also played football on Queenstown’s gravel oval. In this blog, he fills in some of the space between these essentially Tasmanian extremes.