HORSE LOGGING
The more horsepower the better – that’s always seemed to matter in New Zealand logging.
In the pioneering days of logging in New Zealand it was horses and bullocks that helped to get our precious wood out of the forest. Bush historian, Paul Mahoney, unearthed a photo of a team of horses from the 19th century that were working near Dannevirke and takes readers back to the early days.
AND NOTHING ILLUSTRATES IT MORE than this 1894 photo, which was posed to highlight the impressive size of the Hawkes Bay Timber Company’s horse teams at Rakaiatai near Dannevirke.
On show, at their sawmill site, 34 horses were harnessed into six teams. These teams worked on the company’s bush tramway network, in the era before the
timber industry used roads. The horses were harnessed to work in single file because they followed a metre-wide path between the tramway rails.
Three of the teams likely worked to haul logs from loading sites in the bush. Some big Totara logs on the sawmill skids can be glimpsed between the first and second huts on the left. The other teams hauled sawn timber on the tramway to the railway siding where it was dispatched to markets. A load of sawn timber is seen on the far left, loaded on typical bush tramway bogies.
To get the elevation for this photo the cameraman and his tripod were perched on top of another load of sawn timber on the tram track in the bottom left corner.
Camera speeds were slow in those days, so the cameraman had some luck to get that number of horses and men to stand still for a few precious seconds.
Out in the bush, this company might also have employed horse teams on skidding logs from where they were felled to loading points on the tram. Given the scale of the operation, there might be 18 more horses engaged on skidding harnessed in teams of three. So overall there could be 52 horses working at Rakaiatai.
Around 1900 there were 230 sawmills in New Zealand and if on average each mill employed 20 horses, on skidding, log hauling and sawn timber hauling, then the timber industry at that time may have employed 4,600 horses along with 1000 men to work them.
This is the most dramatic timber industry horse team photo I have ever seen in 50 years of research.
We are even able to estimate the date from genealogical research of Robyn Spurdle. The year 1894 is proposed because it is known that James Smith, on the left, died in January 1895.
I got lucky when my 13-year-old daughter Marie-Claire, keen on horses, volunteered to count the horses and identify the teams linked by harness. The men who controlled the teams were often called trolleymen. Starting in the foreground, and going from left to right, her assessment is:
Team 1: five horses with trolleyman James Smith, then an extra man Jim Smith
Trolleyman and team 2: six horses, then another extra man
Team 3: six horses with trolleyman
Team 4: five horses with trolleyman Trolleyman and team 5: six horses facing the opposite direction, and in the background
Trolleyman and team 6: six horses also facing in the opposite direction
These horses would be well cared for, along with all the costly harness gear. A blacksmith might work daily on shoes and a boy would be employed to clean the horses down and care for them overnight. They would all be ‘hard fed’ on oats and chaff to maintain their physical condition. The wooden fenced yards between huts two and three would be used to rest horses. The blacksmith and boy may even be the ‘extra men’ in the photo.
The four huts visible likely accommodated some of the men who worked in the sawmill and on the tramways. It’s likely two men shared a hut and the married men went home on the weekends. The rooves of the four huts are interesting, showing an era of transition in roofing materials. From the left they are: corrugated iron; weatherboard; corrugated iron; split shingles. Each of the huts has a big wooden chimney; ideally these are built from Kaikawaka which is fire-resistant. There would be soaked clothes to dry out after wet days. There may be more huts than these four.
In the left foreground are the wooden rails of the bush tramway built with 150x150 timbers usually made from a hard-wearing wood like Maire. The surrounding area is a sea of mud. The sawn timber load is chained down to the bolster on a tram bogie. Loaded on top are some heavy Totara slabs that may be sold to split into products, such as house piles or fence battens.
These 34 working horses would all be kept overnight in stables, heated in winter, and the building above the tram bogie may be the stables. Beyond that, out of sight on the left, probably stands the sawmill building and log skids, which can be glimpsed between the buildings.
On the left, a wooden flume from the mill can be seen running above the roof of the first hut. This is a wooden channel, raised several metres on trestle legs, and carrying a flow of water. This flow carries sawdust out to a l arge ever-increasing sawdust heap visible in the background between the second and third huts. The Hawkes Bay Timber Company was prosecuted for disposing of sawdust into a nearby stream and forced to build this facility. The sawdust heap may have remained a feature of this site for 50 years after the sawmill closed.
On the skyline, beyond the flume and sawdust heap, stands the remnant loggedover forest, which contains tree species that did not have a market. My judgement is that most of these trees are Rata.
A big firewood trade was conducted in Hawkes Bay at that time. Wood was the principal fuel, as Hawkes Bay had no local coal source. Wood powered industries like the Tomoana Freezing Works and was used for home heating, bath water and cooking. It is likely that once sawmilling ceased, firewood contractors would have used the tramway for several years to extract much-prized Rata firewood, which was also dispatched by rail. The land would then be cleared for farming.
Thanks to: Robyn Spurdle, Rotorua: Henry Smith family history
Photo: shared by Lester Oliver on Facebook
Gordon Menzies deceased: locating historic timber industry sites at Rakaiatai. NZL