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From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Murray Hitchcock had a contract to deliver firewood to Mooroopna Hospital. At the time, Mooroopna was the main regional hospital for the Goulburn Valley. Rushworth community had a very strong relationship with the hospital in earlier years, with local folk often engaging in fundraising
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For many years the Rushworth forest was the source of firewood for factories in the Goulburn Valley, as well as large institutions like the Mooroopna Base Hospital. The wood was used in boilers to provide steam power. From the 1960s, demand started to decline as industry moved to other sources
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During World War II the Rushworth-Tatura-Murchison area was home to a number of internment and prisoner-of-war camps. Camps 1-4, located around the northern end of Waranga Basin were civilian internment camps while Camp 13 was a POW camp south-east of the Basin, not far from Murchison. Most of the POWs
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When the railway line was extended to Colbinabbin in 1914, wood mills were opened up at stations on the line. The station at Moora was known as the Erwen station, just up Geodetic Rd North from the present day settlement of Moora. There were mills there, as well as at
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Rushworth railway station was the hub around which the timber industry, and particularly the firewood industry, was organised. As has been noted in previous stories, the line from Murchison to Rushworth was completed in 1890. A siding was constructed at the Rushworth station in 1899, along which the timber mills
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In the early part of the 20th century, there were typically about half a dozen wood mills at the Rushworth station, with others at stations along the Murchison to Colbinabbin railway line. These mills “were driven by steam portable engines of around seven to eight horsepower capacity. In two of
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William Skate’s wood mill The Skate family had a long connection with Rushworth, dating back to the gold rush years. Perhaps the best-known members of the family were John Skate and his wife Anne (nОe Clayton) who set up and ran the Excelsior Coffee Palace. The building, now a
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Henry Campbell was one of the first sawmillers to set up a firewood mill at the Rushworth station. He paid rates on the site from 1892 to 1902,1 when he sold the mill and moved to Wangaratta with his wife. Apparently unrelated to other Campbells who came to the
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There was plenty of demand for firewood from Melbourne, with the bulk of the transport needs being met by the railways up until World War 2. Looking back to the pre-war years, The Argus newspaper estimated that Melbourne needed 500-600,000 tons of firewood each year, as well as 100,
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It is hard to understate the amount of timber that was used for firewood in the early days, before people had access to electricity and gas. Almost every house had a wood stove in the kitchen, as well as fireplaces in other parts of the house. Many workplaces required timber
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Tony Ford
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Early days of sleeper cutting The last few stories have focussed on the sleeper cutters of the Rushworth Forest. They had a tough life working out in the forest, getting minimal return for their highly skilled work, while at the same time enduring plenty of changes in government policy and