Anti-logging activists have put timber workers lives at risk by spiking logs salvaged for firewood from the Wombat Forest. Source: Weekly Times
Harvest and haulage contractor Colin Robin arrived at his worksite on the outskirts of Barkstead on Monday morning to be confronted with two messages scrawled across his Komatsu log processor by activists that read “Loggers GO HOME” and the more ominous “Logs R SPIKED”.
Just to add weight to that message Mr Robin and his workers discovered three tyres on his logging forwarder, worth $6500 each, were flat, after being drilled out with what was probably a cordless drill.
“It (the warning) may be bullshit,” Mr Robin said. “But you can’t run the risk.”
Hammering steel spikes into logs not only risks damaging machinery, but it also risks injury or death to anyone trying to run a chainsaw or mill saw through the timber.
The irony for Mr Robin is that he was only clearing fallen trees to create 80m-wide firebreaks around the township of Barkstead and along roadsides, under a contract with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change.
Salvaging of at least 500,000 tonnes of windblown trees across most of the forest has already been blocked, due to a legal injunction brought by a local environment group, despite warnings it posed a major fire risk to local communities.
In September Supreme Court Justice Melinda Richards issued an interim order halting the salvage work, stating she did not accept the argument that the fallen trees needed to be removed to reduce the fire hazard “because I came to the view that the evidence did not support the claim”.
Mr Robin said the salvaged logs were destined for firewood as most had been left lying in the forest floor since June 2021 and had split.
Work at the site will be delayed for at least the next 24 hours, as the tyre repairer must travel up from the Latrobe Valley to fix the three drilled out tyres.
Pieces of corkscrew shaped rubber littered the ground around where activists drilled out the tyres in an attack that Mr Robin said happened over the weekend, most likely on Sunday night.
It’s the second time Mr Robin’s machinery has been vandalised. About 12 months ago to the day, activists used rocks to smash the windows on his grader and drilled in the side walls of all six of its tyres.
