Hello, Everybody, First off note I have a new email address because some
sort of 'dispute' erupted between my normal server and envirolink which
dropped me off the list and wouldn't let me back on.
So I haven't had any bdnow mail since last Friday 5 September.
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It is about a year since I first heard of the hardwood samples at the
Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia's National
Capital. Their story, which I researched and wrote up some months ago, has
nothing whatever to do with biodynamics. However, I have submitted it to the
list knowing that there are members who are tree-lovers or who appreciate
the value of timber in mapping out the history of our planet and people. It
is my fervent hope that someone will come up with an inexpensive answer to
the problem posed.
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The Dadswell Collection
In the 1920s, Australia was a timber importer and a fledgling timber
exporter. Someone (at the Council of Science and Industrial Research (CSIR)
in Melbourne, as the Commonwealth Scientific amd Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO) was known then) recognised that we as a nation did not
have a ready means of positively identifying our hardwood timber species and
set about organising one by calling for samples from all over this country.
In the early 30s, the samples were assembled into a collection by a CSIR
person named H.E. Dadswell, in conjunction with two other people (Maisie
Burnell & Audrey M Eckersley) who then produced several reference works.
In all, the Collection consisted of samples "from 13,000 tree species of
9,000 genera belonging to a total of about 270 botanical families - from
Acanthaceae to Zygophyllaceae." Samples from butt sap, butt truewood, and
toplog were taken from each tree. Each sample was an undressed block
approximately 600mm x 100mm x 50mm (24" x 4" x 2"). Pieces measuring 100mm
to 150mm long were cut from the butt truewood samples for macroscopic and
microscopic examination.
One of the reference books is entitled Methods for the Identification of the
Light-Coloured Woods of the Genus Eucalyptus. I have a copy which I tracked
down at an auction house in Adelaide, South Australia. It contains 60 pages
of methodology; tree descriptions (of 41 species of Eucalypts) including
common & botanical names, distribution, general properties, basic density,
burning splinter test result, and anatomy; and 41 photographic plates. The
tree species range from E. gigantea - Alpine Ash to E. consideniana -
Yertchuk.
The Collection was held by CSIR's Division of Forestry Products in Melbourne
for some considerable time and then one or more pieces 25mm were cut from
each sample and collated into a second collection. They number in total
47,000. At some time (presumably when Dadswell died) this second collection
was named the H.E. Dadswell Memorial Wood Collection; since then the words
'and Slide' have been added after 'Wood". In 1993, three further reference
books were compiled using this collection which has been described by CSIRO
as 'an important national resource'.
(One would have to agree, considering that a great number of these tree
species are now either extinct, commercially extinct, or 'locked up' in
national parks. One would also think that the original collection was an
equal important national resource. However .....)
When the second collection had been put together, the original one was
offloaded on to Latrobe University in Victoria ('offloaded' is my word - it
may not have been as casual as that). It was kept there for a number of
years until the institution ran out of space (or the inclination to hold on
to it wore off) and then the decision was made to dispose of it at the local
landfill! Fortunately, a Reader in Wood Science at the Department of
Forestry, Australian National University, Dr Philip Evans, heard about it
and with the help of a sympathetic faculty head, had the collection trucked
to Canberra.
A happy ending, one might think. But, No. The collection (down, I think, to
a few hundred samples) is stored under tarpaulins in the open air; the
blocks are packed in banana boxes. They are deteriorating badly, which is
hardly surprising.
There was a woodworking exhibition last year called Rings of History. The
beautiful artefacts in it were made from some of the blocks in this
collection. They may (probably 'will') be the last objects made if we do not
somehow get that collection into clean, dry and secure surroundings very
quickly indeed.
You may wonder what my interest in this affair is. It's very simple. Most of
my life I spent in the RAF and RAAF but it's irrelevant to this. For most of
the last 15 years I was a woodworker working with recycled timbers. (Not a
turner, but a box and cabinet maker.) Most of the woods I have used have
been common-or-garden compared to many in this collection; indeed, I know my
limitations very well and while I have the skills to dress and lacquer the
samples (which is surely part of what they need) I could in no way match the
brilliance of the Rings of History collection.)
In 1993 I was living in a tiny village near the Sassafras Hills between
Braidwood and Nowra in NSW. At that time I was exploring the old woodworking
methods - broadaxes, froes, adze work and so on - for which one needs green
timber and so I asked a friend for a tree. Not a problem, he said, drove me
to a spot on his property and indicated some stringy barks, all about 30m
high, asking which one I would like. I picked one out and he sent me to
stand right away while he cut it down. With a chainsaw. In less than 5
minutes. Then he trimmed the branches off, cut the trunk into two-metre
sections, rolled them on to his truck and took them and me home. There he
unloaded them and peeled the bark off for me.
After he'd left, I knelt and ran my hands over the cool surface of the logs
and then I stood up and looked down at them for what seemed to be a long
time. In my mind's eye I could still see the tree standing so majestically
in the paddock with its mates, leaves waving in the breeze, and it came to
me that I had done a terrible thing. Then and there I swore to myself that I
would never cut down a living hardwood tree again unless it was diseased or
dying, and I haven't yet.
I have a love for wood which has, I think, been handed down to me from many
generations back, and has grown upon me in the last 15 years. I believe it
would be sacrilege of a very special sort to waste this collection and an
insult to the memory of Dadswell who, I am sure, would have been the last
person to allow it to rot outside as it is doing. That is my interest. If I
had the money, I would save it myself. What the Collection needs, however,
is a permanent home.
roger
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First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you
win. - Mahatma Gandhi
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