SONG OF THE SAW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 77, 1 April 1932, Page 8

SONG OF THE SAW.

TIMBER, INDUSTRY SLACK. LOGS IN FREEMAN'S BAY. KAURIS FLOATING IN HARBOUR. In prosperous times the huge saws at the timber mills at Freeman's Bayare hungry for all the fine logs that can be fed to them, but to-day, as a result of the prevailing depression, things are very different. The mills are working little more than half time, and there is no need for the whirring saws to screech their unmusical song from starting time on Monday until the cease work hooter on Saturday. It is doubtful, indeed, if there is any industry that reflects the present hard times more clearly than does the timber industry.

On this page is published a photograph of a number of fine kauri logs floating in Freeman's Bay. The scene is just an ordinary one, and other logs have floated in the bay from the time the local mills were established, but the logs that are there to-day will probably bo much longer in the water than they would be in normal times. With tire building trade in a very struggling way the demand for good timber is limited, and there is no need to haul the logs to the saws as fast as they can be got into the mill. "In prosperous times you would not see valuable logs like these so long afloat," said one miller this morning.

Some of the logs that at present are floating in the bay have been there for three months. It is not likely, however, that they will be left there very much longer, as there is a limit to the time a good kauri can be left afloat. After Ave or six months in the water a log suffers from the attacks of sea worm, and kauris are too valuable, even in bad times, to be sacrificed to the worms.

"I think the timber business ia worse to-day than ever it was," said one miller. All bush contracts for felling timber had been stopped, and there were not likely to be many more big rafts towed into the port until after the winter. At the present he could see no signs of an immediate revival. Another miller gave the opinion that business was slightly better than it was a few months ago, and timber, for his mill, was still being felled.

It is not so many years ago that a sturdy towboat, with a long raft of logs in her wake, was an almost every week sight in the harbour, but those days have gone, for the present at any rate. Naturally it is the hope of everyone concerned in the industry that the time will come again when the saws will eagerly devour every foot of good New Zealand timber that can be fed to them.