The opening of the Benalla to Tatong Railway in north-east Victoria in 1913 enabled sawmilling operations to establish in the Tolmie-Toombullup forests north of Mansfield. This extract from ‘Light Railways’ No. 93 introduces some of the early sawmills and tramlines that were constructed in the ‘Toombullups’.

One of these early sawmillers, McCashney and Harper, moved their mill from near Bullengarook (Trentham) in 1916 to set up at Toombullup. This became one of the longest established milling companies in the Mansfield area, commencing operation in the Toombullups in 1918, moving to Bakers Creek in the Buttercup area east of Mansfield in 1937 and then to Barjarg, west of Mount Samaria, in 1950. The mill ceased operations in 1972.

In 1935 PV Christensen applied to the Forests Commission for logging rights in the Delatite River basin below Mount Buller. On being granted these rights, Christensen built the Delatite Sawmill at the junction of Buller Creek and Delatite River – an area known as Mirimbah. Shortly after this, the Commission established annual sawlog allocations rather than area rights, and several more mills were built nearby.

The loss in the 1939 fires of huge areas of mature mountain ash forest closer to Melbourne, and increased community requirements for housing timbers following the Second World War, brought about a boom in the demand for timber from the alpine ash forests of north-eastern Victoria and Gippsland. As the amount of salvageable fire-killed logs from central Victoria diminished in the mid-to-late 1940s, many sawmills transferred to the alpine ash forests, with several establishing in the Mansfield area.

Hundreds of kilometres of roads were built by the Forests Commission to access these forests, with many of the roads later becoming major tourist routes. Mirimbah was the base for the construction of roads into the Upper King, Catherine and Wonnangatta River catchments. The Jamieson-Licola Road was built in the mid-1950s with the Licola to Lazarini section being completed by 1955/56.

The sawmills built in Mansfield in 1947 and 1948 largely drew their sawlog supplies from forests in the Upper King, Howqua and Jamieson River catchments. By 1977 there were five sawmills in Mansfield as well as one each in Jamieson, Benalla, Wangaratta and Eurobin, all drawing sawlogs from the mountain forests of the Mansfield Forest District.

A booklet prepared by the Mansfield Historical Society – ‘Sawmilling in the Mansfield District’ – notes that at one stage 14 sawmills were operating in the Mansfield area and, at the height of the milling years, about 40 laden timber trucks rolled out of the town every afternoon. That booklet contains a series of essays by former members of the Mansfield sawmilling community and give some insights into the industry and those dependent on it.