TALL TIMBER
SIX-DECADE GOLDEN DOWNS LEGACY
The Green family’s logging connection to Golden Downs goes back almost 65 years, and four generations. It may have started with the old boys but the new generation is taking the reins.
GOLDEN DOWNS NEAR NELSON is an iconic piece of forestry estate that features in the family history of many loggers from around New Zealand, not just those from Nelson Tasman. One family, however, has a stronger legacy in the Downs than most.
The Green family’s logging connection to Golden Downs goes back almost 65 years, and four generations. In 1956, Basil Green and his brother Bob started working alongside their father, Bob Senior, as only the second contractor appointed at that time to work in the Golden Downs.
Basil and his siblings started school
in Whataroa, South Westland, where their father Bob was logging white pine (kahikatea) for A.R Wallace to use for butter boxes.
The family shifted to North Westland, near Greymouth in 1944. “The war was still going at that time of course,” says Basil, “and I was about eight or nine. We lived south of Greymouth and my father went logging for Ogilvie and Co.”
After Basil left school he went to work at a concrete factory, making tubs. Working life was pretty tough for the spry but diminutive young school leaver. After a short time delivering telegrams for the post
office, Basil started cutting posts with his father.
“I only lasted a couple of days before the neighbour and mill manager across the road asked for me to go and see him and offered me a job starting the next day. We were processing rimu logs for Stratford & Blair at South Beach, who had three mills which they supplied with wood they logged themselves at a rate of about 8,000 feet per day.”
After only a week in his new job the mill burnt down so Basil was out of a job. Fortunately, he was re-hired when the mill was rebuilt at Marsden above Shanty Town. Basil would log in the bush and then go and work in the mill before returning to log more rimu when the mill supply ran out.
“At that stage I followed the money and went to work for the highest bidder. I left the mill to work in a survey gang working on the Haast highway. I was then offered a job at Stratford & Blair before moving to Oneone, near Harihari to work for Ogilvies.”
The next move took Basil back to Greymouth at Stillwater Creek and he was then offered a job at a mill in Fox Glacier, which also involved logging in Bruce Bay. “The mill was paying about five bob a day more so I went there.”
Logging tools and conditions were very different, says Basil. “You didn’t get much help in terms of the gear we had to use. You only had the axe and saw and wedges, no power saws. Crosscut handsaws. I was mostly breaking out.”
Meanwhile Bob Snr. was logging, cutting, and splitting silver birch on the West Coast, to supply posts and battens for fences on farm stations towards the Lewis Pass in Hawarden and a big station near the headwaters of Lake Tekapo.
“The farm stations Dad (Bob Senior) supplied the posts to, would sometimes have to use two D8s to pull a load of posts up the steep terrain to the top,” says Basil. “There’s some power there! When he got to a steep part he’d unhook one bulldozer to put a track through and then hook the D8s back up together again and go a bit further.”
Basil’s brother, Bob, left school at the age of 14 and went to help his Dad cutting the silver birch post contract. This was done with the use of horses at Rutherglen, Greymouth. Bob Snr. then moved on and went native logging for an Ogilvie’s crew and travelled in and out of the bush blocks on rail jiggers for transport. At 21 years old, Bob Jnr. took a job for a year or so driving a coal truck out from Strongman mine.
Moving to Nelson
The next change was sparked by Bob Snr. and his wife Ina, going to Nelson for a holiday in 1956. While they were there Bob got wind of a logging contract being offered by A.L. Greenslade. They were land agents and also had a sawmill.
“Dad turned up to see him but he had just walked out of the office, so Dad made the office lady chase Greenslade down the street so that he could talk to him about the contract,” says Basil. “After that conversation he rang me in Fox Glacier and my brother Bobby and said that they wanted the three of us. Dad said to me, ‘we all go or nobody goes’. I said, ‘I’ll be home at the weekend’.
“By the time we arrived in Nelson Dad had a D4, chainsaws, and all the gear sorted that our small crew would need. I came when Dad called because family is family. I was a bit dubious at first. I wondered how the three of us would get on.”
The new E.R. Green and Sons Logging venture was contracted to A.L. Greenslade to thin 30-year-old radiata from the first planting in Golden Downs in the late 1920s.
“Our pay rate was 10 pence per cubic foot,” recalls Basil. “Everything was hand measured. The company was very strict. As we thinned, we weren’t allowed to knock the bark off surrounding trees. In those days we would work until 1pm on a Saturday to give us a good start for the following week. We’d do two loads a day, or about 900 cubic feet.”
Being an unknown contractor had its drawbacks when it came to obtaining supplies, says Basil. “We broke an axe handle but the two hardware shops in Wakefield wouldn’t sell us one because they said they didn’t know us. The first time we went into one of the local pubs we wondered whether the same thing would happen as we asked for three beers that we’d pay for the following week. But they served us and we went back to that same pub every Friday for years.”
E.R. Green and Sons Logging carried on in Golden Downs through to clearing up windfall after Tropical Cyclone Giselle in 1968, the cyclone which caused the sinking of the Wahine in Wellington Harbour. “That storm led to the company bringing a lot more loggers over from the West Coast to help with the clean-up. It was dangerous work but we got through it alright.”
Career shift
On 29 April 1977 Bob Snr. decided to disband the crew and sold some of the gear. Basil took a job at SouthPine and finished his working life there. Basil’s brother Bobby kept one of the crew’s D4 tractors which he used to pull logs as well as help train the young men at the Woodsman Training school in the Golden Downs.
“There was no New Zealand qualification framework for the industry then,” says Basil. “The trainers, including Bobby, pieced modules together for logger 1, 2, 3, and senior logger, to try and get some consistency across the industry. This was something that Bob Jnr. was very passionate about as he knew that the industry needed well-trained people to get the work done safely and build depth in the industry.”
It wasn’t too long before Bob Jnr. returned to contracting, however. This time he had a ground-based, road-lining crew with Timberlands. In 1988 the next generation of the family joined the industry when Bob’s son Mike answered the family calling.
“Dad said it was about time I went logging so I gave my two weeks’ notice at TNL where I was truck-driving and started work with him in his ground-based crew,” says Mike. “This was a pretty cool time as I was working with my Dad. A few years later my cousin Ken and a good few mates were in the crew as well. Work was hard but we made it fun. Over the years we built a solid, proven, and safe logging crew. They were a great team of guys.”
Ken recalls receiving the call to join the crew in 1991, just as he was about to head to Bali from Australia on a surfing holiday.
“I can remember saying, ‘yay I’m going
home!’,” says Ken. Even the atrocious weather of his first few weeks on the job didn’t put him off. “It rained for the first two weeks and the skidder looked like it was floating. But after three days on the job I said to myself ‘this’ll do’ and I’ve been logging ever since.
“It’s in the blood. We all used to go up in the school holidays. We were introduced to logging at a young age. It’s a big part of us.”
Basil adds, “My Dad was always fond of saying bushmen are born, not made.”
In 1992 R.S. Green Logging took the very significant step of purchasing a Madill 071 hauler, contracting to Weyerhaeuser NZ.“Us young guys didn’t know anything about haulers,” says Mike. “But Dad employed guys to help and we all learnt quickly as we went. We had plenty of help and support through our learning curve and it all worked out fine.”
Just two years later Mike’s father Bob passed away and Mike and his mother continued to manage the crew and the business. In late 1997 R.S. Green withdrew from harvesting operations.
“The block we were working at the time was struck by a strong wind event one afternoon causing our setting to blow over in a matter of minutes,” says Mike. “Knowing the capabilities of the hauler, we felt that it was a big ask to continue to complete the setting safely and at the tonne rate being offered to do so. Price negotiations broke down with the forest company.”
Greens and the company agreed to disagree and, with regret, R.S. Green Logging closed its contract and withdrew from harvesting.
“I contracted myself out as a casual worker to different logging contractors and a forest company for several months,” says Mike. “I was doing anything from machine operating, harvest planning,and log truck driving, to tree felling in a heli-harvest operation.
“In April 1998 Mike Fraser contacted me to come operate an excavator for him that he had on hire as a trial.This job was for two weeks and I ended up staying with Mike until February 2000.” After a stint running a swing yarder for a local contractor Mike took on the role of Forestry Tutor at NMIT, before returning to work for Mike Fraser as operations manager in March 2003. “I am still here to this day.”
Restoring the Green Logging name
Meanwhile Mike’s cousin Ken’s career took a different tack. He worked for iconic Golden Downs logger Zeke Bellis, becoming foreman before buying a half share in Zeke’s business along with Mike Fraser. “Eleven years ago, I bought the whole business and asked Mike and Aunty Di for their permission to restore the Green Logging
name,” says Ken. “I still have the same iconic Bellis hauler and some of the same people as when Zeke owned the business. We’ve gone a bit more mechanised now though.”
Ken’s son Ryan joined the crew four years ago after qualifying as a builder but deciding the physicality of logging was more his style. “I always wanted to go logging but I wasn’t allowed to straight from school,” says Ryan. That didn’t stop him getting the job of rebuilding the hauler when he worked for his Dad during the holidays. “Dad offered me $100 a day and I thought I was made. But then I worked 14 hours every day for two weeks and Dad said, ‘you’ll never work as hard as this again in your life son’.”
Mike’s son Flynn is currently studying for a Bachelor of Forestry Science and is a recipient of a OneFortyOne New Zealand scholarship which provides him with a cash grant for each year of his studies, and holiday work in a range of areas within the company. “He could be my boss!” jokes Ken.
Flynn says that having the opportunity to get hands-on forestry experience and his family history in logging is a huge bonus. Flynn is able to get holiday work in Mike Fraser’s crews and says that he’s learnt a lot working with the crews and with OneFortyOne, seeing both sides of the operation. “A couple of people have come up to me in the office who knew my Grandad Bob or were trained by him. I’d love to work for Ken some holidays as well.”
Industry changes
The family reflects on the many significant changes they’ve observed over their many years in the industry.
“Back then we helped each other to learn and we passed on what we knew,” says Basil. “We’d point out bad things but you can’t tell a man what to do all the time or he’ll get sick of it.”
“Improved safety, increased environmental monitoring, changes in machinery, more documentation requirements – those are all significant shifts we’ve seen,” says Ken. “It never stays still, it’s always moving. It’s good to have the family name kicking around the industry for such a long time.”
“There was a willingness in the early days to take risks to get the job done, to put yourself in harm’s way,” adds Mike. “It’s something that is totally unacceptable but it happened unfortunately. If it went pearshaped and you got a close call you laughed it off, when inside you knew how lucky you had been on that occasion. It was seen as ‘acceptable’ risk. We were fortunate we never got caught out.
“In the past there was not as much incident reporting and less learning taken from things as they happened. I don’t think logging is dangerous it’s more that it’s unforgiving. That’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about health and safety today. I want to try and do what I can to keep people safe, and it’s also a way of following Dad’s training pathway a little.”
In addition to his Operations Manager role at Fraser Logging, Mike undertakes contractor certification audits for Safetree.
“It’s an opportunity for me to have a chance to get around the country and try help if and where possible,” says Mike. “If a business can’t meet the required standards after that, then perhaps they shouldn’t be in our industry in the first place competing against the good operators that are out there.
“There are many good operators, and I have had the pleasure to meet and have worked with a number of them. There’s an old saying along the lines that many people’s actions can be judged wrongly because of a few. We need to do everything we can so that’s not the case.”
“They’ve lowered the accident rate, which makes us older bushmen so happy,” adds Basil. “I’m very proud of Ken and Mike and their boys. The best thing we ever did was move up here from the West Coast.”
“I know Grandad and Dad will be looking down on us sitting atop the tallest tree and be very proud and happy with how the industry as a whole has developed and how we as a family are working within it,” says Mike. “It started with the old boys and it’s for us all to continue and keep improving.”