The Nunniong Plateau was one of the last large resources of Alpine Ash in East Gippsland to be opened up for harvesting. The plateau sat atop a steep escarpment into the Tambo River valley. It had no vehicle access, but cattle pads for Jim Commins to take cattle from their Ensay North farm up to their summer grazing leases on Bentley Plains and Nunniong Plains, and for Bill Murphy and Fred Harding from Bindi up a steep pad to their leases on Low Plains and Nunnet Plains respectively. Those leases and their plateau huts have stayed in families, except Harding’s lease passed to Simon Turner in 1978. There was one summer resident at Bentley Plains, the renowned Bill Ah Chow, employed as a fireguard by the Forests Commission in the fire season. He built the still existing log hut, Moscow Villa, and used to ride a short distance up to Mt Nugong to carry out fire watching duties, initially without a tower or cabin.

Jim McKinty was sent to Ensay in 1940 to carry out assessment of the Nunniong timber resource. In his journals he recounts that a Forests Commission team of ten men had been building a road from Ensay North up to the plateau for two years, which resulted in the current Bentley Plain Road. Jim did not get to finish that assessment as there was a greater need to identify timber to feed the hungry Heyfield mills churning through the Connors Plain ash.

There were a number of small sawmills in the Omeo area accessing close-by forest such as Splitters Range for local purposes. Bush mills at White Bridges near Mount Baldhead were accessed by a major Forests Commission built road from Bruthen. North from there the Mount Delusion ash was accessed by mills at Brookville, later shifted into Swifts Creek. Ezards established a mill in Swifts Creek in 1946, initially accessing timber in the Mount Delusion area west of the township.

In 1951, AF Collins established a mill at Ensay North, sold to GN Raymond in 1960, and again to Neville Smith in the early 80s. Their licence area was on the southern slopes of Nunniong in the head of the Wilkinson Creek.

The Ezard sawmilling family has a reputation, across generations for innovation. In 1959 they bought the Washington high lead logging winch from the Forests Commission at Noojee and moved it to East Gippsland, and set it up in 1960 on their newly constructed road from Bindi in the Tambo Valley up onto the plateau. The winch only operated until 1962, but is still in place, with appropriate interpretive information boards.

With this increase in harvesting activity, Swifts Creek was promoted from a Sub-District to a fully-fledged Forests District in 1960.

Some initial harvesting took place in the late 1950s in the Flinns Road area of Bentley Plains, with logs most likely carted out south on Bentley Plains Road.

In the 1960s logs were generally selectively felled. By 1970, with the advent of defect allowances, cull falling payments, one-man chainsaws and proven regeneration techniques for Alpine Ash, stands were clear felled, debris subject to high intensity burn and aerially seeded with seed from the same locality. This approach to ash regeneration was based on research by Ron Grose and willingly implemented by District forester Moray Douglas on Nunniong.

Logging progressed north within the Ezards licence area into the heads of Blue Shirt Creek, Timbarra river and Mellick Munjie Creek, and south into Woodhouse Creek, and continued right up to the point when VicForests operations were ceased in regrowth stands resulting from the initial 1950s harvesting. As severe fires after 2003 impacted ash resources elsewhere, there continued to be pressure to access lower volume and harder to access ash stands on Nunniong. Thinning operations were introduced in 1995 into stands harvested and regenerated in the 60s along the Nunniong Road.

While the Victorian high country has been racked by large and severe wild fires in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2014 and 2019, Nunniong avoided impact in 2003 with the Alpine fire halted along the edge of the escarpment. In 2019, a fire came out of the Bindi valley and was stopped at the Nunniong Plains, with little impact on timber resources. Another 2019 fire in the steep valleys of the Timbarra River and Bentley Creek spread along way south to Nowa Nowa but did not move up onto the Nunniong Plateau. The adjacent Nunnet plateau was impacted by fire coming up out of the Buchan River headwaters. The cooler weather at high elevation, easier plateau access, and a mosaic of clear grassy plains would have assisted to keep Nunniong relatively fire free, so far.

Today, Moscow Villa is still preserved within the Bentley Plains Natural Features and Scenic Reserve, which contains some fine old growth Alpine ash, a campground and a couple of walking tracks, one named after Moray Douglas, an ex-District Forester at Swifts Creek, Assistant Divisional Forester at Bairnsdale and author of the comprehensive “A History of Forests and Forestry in East Gippsland”.