The Gidgee TripRecently I was invited
by Graham Naughton (who I call the gidgee man) to go bush and collect
some gidgee for my own use. We set out at 3am in the morning in
Graham’s land rover towing a specially built boggy wheel trailer that
can hold 3 - 4 ton of wood. It was a long drive and we arrived at the
property near Cunnamulla at about 3 in the afternoon. We were staying
in the shearers quarters on this hugh sheep station so it was a matter
of putting the food and beer in the fridge and saying hello to he
station managers before setting out to get some gidgee.
By 4 pm, Graham was kicking over his big chainsaw ready to get into
it. We went about 1 km from the quarters back to where Graham left off
last time and soon found a nice Gidgee tree to cut down. By sundown we
had our first Gidgee tree cut into billets about 0.5 to 0.7 m long
sliced in half to form a half moon shape which I can handle on my
bandsaw on return. We got about 8 billets from this log and they were
individually wrapped in pallet wrap plastic, painted on the ends with
an oil sealer to prevent any cracking at all. Back to camp for dinner
and a few beers that went down pretty well. I was a happy camper at
this stage and fired up to get more Gidgee the next day.
We were up early the next day and had our first tree down by about
7am. The second tree was a medium sized Ringed Gidgee just nearby – I
was getting excited as anyone who knows Ringed Gidgee will understand
it’s beauty and it can be difficult to find. We had smoko and I
wandered off, while Graham was sharpening his saw, to see if I could
find some more nice trees. I came across this very big, old tree which
was 3 feet x 2 feet at the butt and one side was dead standing and the
other side growing. With my limited training from Graham on spotting a
Ringed Gidgee tree, I started to think I had found gold – a very large
completely Ringed Gidgee tree. I got Graham over to take a look and he
confirmed it was Ringed Gidgee so out with the saw and down it came.
We had hit the jackpot as it was solid Ringed Gidgee in large sizes
virtually defect free – now I couldn’t wait to get home to cut it up.
It was too early in the day to stop and celebrate with a beer so we
continued on with cutting down another couple of trees with Graham’s
tried and tested method of cutting the logs into billets and lugging
them to the trailer on his trusty modified wheel barrow. The Gidgee
forest is just too thick with old fallen trees and other scrub to
drive the vehicle to the tree so you can only work a few hundred
meters from the farm tracks, otherwise it would be too far to carry
the heavy gidgee billets on the wheel barrow. We nearly had the
trailer full and there was only enough room for one more tree which we
cut down early the next morning before heading home.
I think we cut down 7 Gidgee trees to put 3 tonne of billets in the
trailer and this came out of about 3 acres of the Gidgee forest. To
put this into perspective, the station we cut the wood from is 28
miles x 28 miles or 501 760 acres (203 056 hectares) and it is at
least ˝ covered in trees. This property is also surrounded by other
similar properties so it became very apparent to me that harvesting
Gidgee in this manner is sustainable forever and a day.
Graham runs a business called ‘Loggerheads’ and has been cutting
Gidgee, Mulga and other inland woods for several years. He cuts the
wood up and kiln dries it to sell to box makers, musical instrument
makers, pool cue makers etc. It can only be classed as sensible and
sustainable use of this resource.
Graham has recently moved and is building a new shed and website to
re-establish his business selling inland woods for specialty uses. He
should be up and running later this year and can be contacted via
email at
