A log track in the Otway National Park slips away.
Following are photos that Yvonne and others took of the campaigns to save the precious rainforests in the Otways.
There are also photos showing the effects of plantation harvesting, which is now widespread in this region. Whilst the the clearfelling in State Forests was stopped and replaced with plantations, clearfelling still goes on on private lands.
A log track in the Otway National Park slips away.
A young Beech Myrtle tree,
Log tracks go nowhere. Log tracks compact the soil, create garbage dumps, landslips and pollution in water catchments. Logging tracks are the shame of the Otways.
This is a napalm burn from a forestry helicopter in the west Barwon river valley, Geelong's water catchment. Regeneration burns often fail to start tree regeneration in the Otways.
Otway mists can't hide ugly tree farming attempts by the government. Like a cat with the mange, the Otways suffers from industrial logging every day.
Logging is tearing away the flesh of the Otways rainforests. Logging causes sediment in streams of the Otways and can't be sustainable. Log trucks are hazardous to locals, tourists and every native thing in the Otways.
Clearfelling in the Geelong water catchment, the west Barwon valley is shameful and wasteful.
Logging the Otway rainforest even upsets Che a Shih Tzu pup.
Local residents of the Otways have documented industrialised logging destruction for years but it goes on and on.
Coupe is a French word meaning "blow". Clearfell coupe logging is a blow to the health of water catchment forests. The Otways are too steep, the soil is too soft and rainfall is too high to support a healthy logging industry. Clearfell coupe logging means local removal of trees in one timber harvesting operation. Much of the the remaining vegetation is burnt. Clearfell logging makes eucalyptus predominate over the original rainforest species.
They are sprayed with poison and harvested in their youth for woodchips. Dangerous log trucks compact the soil. Logging tracks slip away and increase soil erosion. The Otways are steep and wet, far too precious for a tree farm. "Australia might have developed a completely distinct ecology and economy, producing new foodstuffs...instead of the beef, and wool, and uranium that have been extracted at such cost...Loggers do not want triple canopy. They want uniform, upright teutonic trees that grow fast and straight and do as they are told...growing desperately towards the light so that in their finest hour they could be chipped...to provide the newsprint for the worst newspapers in the world." Pines "...can be seen in vast tracts of dead black-green at Cape Otway, battening on the rains that blow in year out from Antarctica" They offer... "commercially valuable timber. Into the exposed earth they stuck pinus radiata. The creatures that fed on the eucalypt and its berries withdrew before the rage of the loggers. They did not venture into the plantations where the sun glared down and the winds tore and the rain dug. The pines grew, tall and very close together. Under their sparse black branches the fallen needles accumulated but nothing grew in the darkness. Even the spiders moved on, for where there is no nectar and no pollen no bugs fly." [Germaine Greer, 'Daddy We Hardly Knew You', p229].
Eucalyptus plantation on the road to Forrest. Heavy vehicles churn up the fragile environment near a plantation.
Regrowth planting in Apollo Bay's water catchment produces gun-barrel tree trunks for woodchips and the saw bench. Logging is not sustainable in the sensitive, biodiverse Otways, it is a government lie.
Morriss's Track near Skenes Creek November 2010. This clearfelled pine plantation is terribly steep
Plantation of pines near Skenes Creek. Pine plantations are too acidic for Australian soils and are not suitable as habitat for Australian native animals.
The debarker measures the length of the trunk it is debarking. Everything swings around as it works. A chainsaw inside it chops it off so they are all the same length for the stack.
Heavy machinery, high rainfall, steep slopes, and clearfelled plantations - a recipe for disaster and environmental degradation.
Johanna is a world famous surfing beach near Lavers Hill in the Otways. There are frightening stories about log trucks on Johanna Red and Johanna Blue, the roads to Johanna beach, but what could be worse than these clearfelled plantations?
The Geelong water catchment in the valley of the west Barwon River near Forrest, November 2010.
Yvonne, who started Save the Otways, is now running a B&B in Apollo Bay.
She is still active in promoting sustainable land management practices. If you would like to contribute - See the sample letters you could send to our politicians. You may even want to write your own.
