Paul's trees - 4 years of stormfallen salvage
On June 9th 2021, a severe wind warning was issued for Hepburn Shire.
That night when local berry and orchid grower Paul Ulrik heard twigs and leaves hitting his bedroom window he wasn’t surprised.
But an hour and a half later when a huge tree crashed through the heated glass house containing thousands of his precious orchids, Paul knew this wasn’t a regular storm.
Over the next twelve terrifying hours relentless 100km winds would bring down around three hundred trees including enormous fifty metre tall messmates.
Paul’s property on Fern Rd in Little Hampton next to the Wombat State Forest was the local epicentre of the freak storm that tore down forests in the Dandenong Ranges, Macedon Ranges, LaTrobe Valley and Hepburn Shire.
Seventy percent of the trees on his property were blown over, smashing sheds and flattening his berry farm.
Getting to Paul’s street from Trentham, the CFA cut their way through five kilometres of fallen trees.
After the storm Paul says the overriding emotion wasn’t sadness for the loss of income and destroyed buildings - his glass orchid-house alone took him five years to build - but sadness for the trees. Some of the messmates that had blown down were over 200 years old.
Storm clean-up teams came to take the huge logs away but Paul wanted to see them milled for timber instead of going into the mulcher or being cut into firewood.
He’d had a fallen tree milled for a shed before the storm and knew the messmate was good timber.
Storm clean-up teams came to take the huge logs away but Paul wanted to see them milled for timber instead of going into the mulcher or being cut into firewood.
He’d had a fallen tree milled for a shed before the storm and knew the messmate was good timber.
He bought a portable Lucas sawmill and an excavator, but at seventy years old with health issues he needed help, besides, he remembers wryly, without any training he was a hopeless sawmiller.
Through an old friend, Paul got in contact with CERES Fair Wood's urban sawmiller Darcy Vermont.
Together they worked out a deal for Darcy to use and maintain the sawmill and pay Paul a commission for each cubic metre of timber.
Over the next three years Darcy visited around fifty times, milling and sticking out timber from around eighty trees (there's still more to be milled).
Three years later Darcy dropped the first lot of Paul’s messmate to be sold at CERES Fair Wood
It’s beautifully clean kiln-dried timber in 135x19 & 135x25 boards that will make great furniture, shelving and joinery.
On hearing his messmate had arrived at Fair Wood to be sold to local makers Paul replied, “That was the vision and it makes me very happy”.
You can find Paul’s messmate and other stormfallen timber in the racks at Fair Wood.
Have a great week
Chris
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