The Value of Our Pine Plantations the Tumut and Batlow Districts

25 October 1949 The Tumut and Adelong Times

It may be that sentiment rules the world, but every business man knows that hard cash provides the motive power. 

Many residents of the Tumut-Batlow district who have viewed, somewhat sceptically perhaps, the establishment by the Forestry Commission of pine plantations may now be interested to learn of the hard-cash value that these pine plantations have brought into the district.

The bulk of the pine plantations in south-eastern New South Wales are situated in the Tumut and Batlow forestry districts.

The amount of money paid out each week by the Forestry Commission to its various employees working on these plantations amounts to £720, the total number of men employed being approximately 80. 

Two up-to-date sawmills have been constructed during the last ten years in order to utilise the timber which   has been created on these areas.  

These two mills between them em- ploy 105 men and distribute £800 per week in wages.

The total amount of I money brought into the district by these mills is approximately £70,000 per annum. 

These brief figures will serve to show clearly just what the pine plantations mean to the financial prosperity of the district and what would be the result if, by any unfortunate circumstance, they should be destroyed. 

This is only the beginning.

The trees are growing rapidly and are producing an increasing volume of timber every day. Provided the planting plans approved by the Minister for Conservation are carried out in future years, many not-so-young men will live to see the day when large, modern, integrated wood-using industries, based on the raw material produced in these forests will become established in the district.

The establishment of such industries will bring to the Tumut and Batlow districts an era of prosperity and development undreamed of hitherto.