HYDRO and FORESTRY

Underwater Logging in Lake Pieman, Tasmania

The Pieman River in Northwest Tasmania was dammed and flooded in 1986 – it is now known as Lake Pieman. There have been 56 major dams and 30 hydropower stations built over the years to provide 80% of Tasmania’s power supply. The first hydroelectric power station (Waddamana) was built in 1916 and today the integrated hydropower scheme harnesses hydro energy from six major water catchments.

While major issues surrounded the Franklin River and Lake Pedder hydro schemes, the damming of the Pieman (and King) rivers escaped similar controversy. This development included three power stations and five dams with lake Pieman and Reece dam being commissioned in 1986/1987.

Part of the work to create Lake Pieman centred at two major tributaries of the Pieman, the Mackintosh and the Murchison Rivers. As is the case with many well-known parts of Tasmania, the original Pieman River was named after Thomas ‘The Pieman” Kent, a former baker – and convict! (Having escaped custody he was recaptured at the mouth of the river in 1822 – and so the name ‘Pieman’ River.)

“When plans to dam The Pieman were made in 1971, logging returned to the region. The area where Pieman Lake was to sit was opened up to forestry to avoid wasting the timber. But the regions dense forest and inaccessible nature made for slow going and by the time the dam was ready to be filled only a small portion of the lakes footprint had been logged.

Time and tide wait for no man, and as the Reece Dam’s water flowed and filled up Lake Pieman in 1986 the remaining forest was covered over with water. There, under those dark tanninstained waters, the lost forest sat until 2015.”

Last month I decided to visit Lake Pieman and was excited to have Jeff Harvey, Keith Coady and Frank Di Stefano join me on my little adventure. Each of these wonderful men, and longtime Bowens people, are the company’s timber experts – with a real love for timber as a structural, decorative and environmentally friendly product.

For a number of years I’ve been captivated by the work of the two young inquisitive and innovative men who had worked out that below the surface of Lake Pieman (and other ‘man-made’ lakes), there were thousands of ‘drowned’ unique and rare Tasmanian tree species. Trees that, at least below the lakes surface, were remarkably well preserved due to the deep almost black (tannin-stained) ice-cold water which allows fewer ultraviolet rays getting through, with a minimum of oxygen which speeds up decay, and fewer wood consuming organisms. Remarkably species such as celery-top pine, Tasmanian myrtle, blackwood, old growth Tassie Oak, Sassafras and Huon Pine – 200 years (and plus?) old trees.

Andrew Morgan and David Wise are the cofounders of Hydrowood – David “was flying over Lake Pieman when he sighted a rare, sunken commodity. A vast quantity of the state’s most sought-after timber species”. Then together with Andrew, who had 30 years of experience managing and growing forestry and natural resource businesses, research into retrieving and processing this trove of lost species began (2012).

Launching Hydrowood in 2015, David and Andrew wrote “Our forest landscape was twenty-seven meters deep. With an ethical plunge, we created history by resurrecting these precious timbers. The environmentally affable mission didn’t deliver your average reclaimed wood though. Hydrowood had purity. No rusty nails or bolts from a previous life. Instead, untouched grain. Not salvaged timber, long dead on a musty floor, but rare timbers master builders dream of, harvested in a way you wouldn’t believe.” Launching one of the world’s first underwater logging operations, David and Andrew built a barge with three hydraulic thrusters to hold a 45-tonne excavator with a harvesting head on an extended boom. The operator locates a tree, runs the head down the trunk, clamps and cuts it with a chain saw and lifts the log on to a separate barge which when full is towed by a tugboat to their base at the end of the Argent track just past the town of Rosebery (Lake Pieman). The logs are transported to the mill to be sawn into boards and racked out to dry undercover in a warehouse providing unique reclaimed timber for the architectural and furniture market.

“Hydrowood had purity. No rusty nails or bolts from a previous life. Instead, untouched grain.”

Again, for the ecologically conscious, it’s a relief to see all these logs and be able to feel that very little has been disrupted for it to be harvested. Environmental analysis found little to oppose while the creation of the impoundment itself has wrought ecological change, there is minimum impact in taking the timber itself. It seems that the great miracle of the Hydrowood agenda is that it has been able to combine hydro and forestry – two of the most divisive industries in Tasmania’s history – and put noone’s nose out of joint!

“Environmental analysis found little to oppose while the creation of the impoundment itself has wrought ecological change, there is minimum impact in taking the timber itself.”

Jeff, Keith, Frank and I were hosted over our couple of days by Andrew Morgan and Hydrowood’s General Manager Darren Johnson. After six hours driving time to and from Lake Pieman, we all enjoyed a magnificent dinner together in Launceston – and celebrated, to the day, Jeff Harvey’s 63 years with Bowens! Adding Jeff’s years at Bowens together with mine plus Keith and Frank – we could have stood amongst the other 200 year old logs on Hydrowood’s wharf!