More than 22,000 regional and rural workers work in the New South Wales timber supply, including more than 5,700 heavily clustered in the North East—long considered the NSW engine room for hardwoods.
Last week, four members of Chris Minns’ Cabinet—led by Tara Moriarty, Minister for Agriculture, Regional NSW, Western NSW, and including Kate Washington, Yasmin Catley, and Sophie Cotsis—heard from the Dorney family, which operates two sawmills (SA Relf and Newells Creek) in the small town of Bulahdelah, 235km north-northeast of Sydney.
Considered the lifeblood of the local community, the Dorney family relies on a precious supply of hardwoods from the NSW government and private native forests to create much-needed products like high-grade building timbers used on mining projects, roads, bridges, tunnels, and scaffolding, as well as biomass, wood pallets, and other bio-based forest products.
“We must have sawdust in our veins, the way that we love the smell of sawdust and work with the timber,” said Glenn Dorney, a fourth-generation member of the Dorney family who has worked at Newells Creek Sawmill for almost 45 years. “We take the good log to the last piece of firewood; we take everything we can to feed the country.”
With a population of just over 1,000, “half the fuel sold at our local depots goes to the local mills, while the timber mills also account for half of the hardware local business,” said John Sahyoun from the Bulahdelah Chamber of Commerce.
This is supported by research produced by Ernst + Young, which last year demonstrated the viability of hardwood timber in supporting thousands of jobs and skills right along the supply chain.
“We need to set out the facts. Hardwood timber is a sustainable, renewable and essential input into the construction, agriculture, mining and energy sectors,” according to Maree McCaskill, CEO of Timber NSW, who was with the four cabinet members, two parliamentary secretaries, six National Party members (including Leader Dugald Saunders) and three crossbenchers (including Mark Banasiak from Shooters and Fishers).
“The NSW timber industry is, in fact, a significant and growing part of the state’s economy and has had this central role in our regional communities,” Ms McCaskill said, with regions like Bulahdelah responsible for producing two-thirds of NSW’s hardwood supply.
“Science-based policies must safeguard local timber supply,” she said, adding policies like the Great Koala National Park – an electoral promise that the Minns government – must not compromise the sustainable management of forests.
“Forests are a natural system, and the natural process is for trees to fight each other – survival of the fittest – and as they go up, the weaker ones will lose out,” according to Kevin Carter, a retired 30-year forester who also worked for National Parks NSW for 13 years.
“If you leave it long enough, they’ll die out, and the dominant ones will dominate, but the whole process is slow and sick,” he said. “What forestry does is take some of the smaller products away, then they are going to grow, and they can catch up faster.”
“Forest managers pride themselves on being very good at that job, and by doing that, they can keep a healthy forest…I believe you keep pretty good biodiversity and all the other values that go with a forest from people using it, water quality, animal habitat.”
About the Dorney family
The Newell’s Creek Mill was established by Bart Shoobridge, Arthur Harvey, and Harold Dorney more than 70 years ago; it is today a fifth-generation family business. In addition to the mills, the family is engaged in value-adding in the timber industry, operating two drying kilns and a board plant at SA Relf & Sons in Bulahdelah.
Newell’s Creek Sawmilling Company purchased S.A Relf & Sons Pty Ltd in 1988. The company’s main driving force for many years was Royce Dorney, who started working in the Newell’s Creek Sawmill, owned by his uncle and father, in 1952 as a 14-year-old. He became manager in 1972 and remained the managing director until September 2009, when he passed away from many illnesses.
The current managing directors are three of Royce’s four sons, Gary, Glen, and Anthony Dorney. The brothers are the fourth generation of the Dorney family to operate the Newell’s Creek Sawmilling Company. Six of Royce Dorney’s grandkids are now in the business and play an active role in its day-to-day running.
The Newell’s Creek Sawmilling Company has three main operating sectors: the Newell’s Creek Sawmill, Newell’s Creek Haulage and Harvesting, and S.A. Relf & Sons Sawmill.
