90 Australian Wood Review
TIMBERT
he roughly triangular region that
runs from Lismore to Ballina to
Brunswick Heads was once described
as The Big Scrub. Once subtropical
rainforest, this 75,000 hectare area
was largely cleared in the 1800s for
dairy farming. Now, those forests
are slowly returning, in the form of
private plantings of the rainforest
species that once grew freely there.Sunday April 15, 2018 in Federal,
NSW was a picture-perfect day. Blue
skies, rolling hills, green and forested,
it was the place that over 500
hundred people chose to gather.The occasion was Woodfest, a
celebration of native timbers that
marked the creation of a newcollective of farm foresters known
as Quality Timber Traders (QTT).‘Woodfest is all about celebrating
sustainably grown native timber’, said
Kate Love, events manager for QTT.
‘It’s about bringing tree growers and
woodworkers together so that we can
create a local loop between seed to
tree products and really showcase
what we can do with our beautiful
native timbers.’Using these timbers locally is not
new. Years ago the region was home
to furniture making and boat building
industries and there was once a
plywood factory. Depleting, and then
protecting the remnants of that once
Big Scrub meant those rainforestspecies were no longer available
to harvest, mill and work with.Quality Timber Traders is made up
of groups of ‘environmentally biased’
farm growers, says Joe Harvey-Jones,
who holds a PhD in subtropical
forestry and has established several
plantings on his property. ‘They love
trees, love seeing them growing, and
like the way they are sequestering
carbon to make a better world for
our grandchildren.’Made into high value quality
woodwork, carbon is locked up for
hundreds of years, Joe explained.
‘It’s like the slow food movement,
where locally sourced timber creates
a sustainable industry’, he said. ‘JustFrom Seed to
Tree to Product
A new collective of farm foresters is bringing its product to market.