Many of the legacy radiata pine and blue gum plantations in the Adelaide Hills were planted decades ago and, while some of these may not have been maintained to forestry industry standards, there is still a significant amount of valuable timber to be found in the trunk of a 35-year-old tree.

Admittedly, after three years of standing dead out in the unforgiving Hills weather, many of the trees we’re dealing with have suffered a certain amount of degradation and rot and won’t be suitable for milling. But a tree still contains a considerable volume of biomass, so we’ll still fell them and they’ll be set aside for chipping and eventual conversion to biochar.

However, trees are pretty resilient, and we’re finding that just as many have retained enough structural integrity to contain a large volume of good, viable timber.

As part of our project, Treecovery has used its Commonwealth BSBR funding to purchase a Hardwood Mills Australia mobile bandsaw mill, which we now have up and running, to process the significant number of radiata pine and mixed eucalyptus logs being extracted from bushfire-affected properties around the Adelaide Hills region.

But we’re not going it alone on the milling front. We are also using our funding to engage and support local mill operators, including our good friend Paul Finbar McCarthy at Terra Organica. Based in the Adelaide Hills, Finbar is a gifted carpenter, miller and musician and his Lucas Mill adds a great deal of capacity and versatility to our milling operations. We’re looking forward to doing great things together as our project progresses.

_{Finbar from Terra Organica milling up some pine logs on his Lucas Mill, to build solar kilns, which we’ll use to season our milled timber.}

Apart from the pines, we are also targeting individual, high value trees from bushfire-affected properties – introduced species like Oak (Quercus spp.), Ash (Fraxinus spp.) and Elm (Ulmus spp.), and non-endemic native species like Silky Oak (Grevillia robusta), eucalypts like Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) and many others.

If you have a fire-affected tree that you would like to have removed and/or milled, get in contact with us to arrange an evaluation.

We’re now set up to do custom milling jobs for you. Whether you’d like to bring us your log/s or pieces of timber and have us cut them to the dimensions you’d like, have us bring the mill to you and saw the material at your location, or choose timber from our considerable stockpile and tell us what dimensions you’re looking for, we can do it. Send us a message via our contact page and we’ll organise a time to catch up and chat about your specific requirements.