When the butter was crudely churned, it had no defined shape or size as the farmer invariably used it in their household or sold any excess to neighbours or the public at markets. It then had to be cut into the desired size.
But when the factories began producing butter in commercial quantities, they began producing a standard size. A simple device made from wood and wire, a butter cutter cut a 9-pound slab (just over 4 kilograms) of butter into more manageable and saleable half-pound (just over 225 grams) blocks. Each half-pound block was wrapped in parchment paper for transport and sale.
To transport the butter to various markets, factories looked for timber that didn’t taint the butter. Australian hardwoods were unsuitable because they contained tannins and oils known to taint the butter. Using a timber species that did not change the smell or taste of the butter packed inside was essential.
Hoop pine on veneer lathe at Austral Plywood, 1932. Photo J A Lunn.
In Victoria, they looked to New Zealand’s tallest tree, the white pine or kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides). Because white pine timber is soft, pale and odourless, it was considered ideal for butter boxes.
Every three months, Victoria imported around 1,200 cubic metres of white pine from New Zealand. However, many white pine forests, which grew on accessible swamp lowlands, had already been cleared for agriculture. What remained was limited. As butter factories spread across New Zealand and export markets were secured, the country felled and milled what remained of this timber along the Waihou River.
New South Wales and Queensland mainly used Australia’s hoop pine, which grew naturally in rainforests in both states. Like New Zealand’s white pine, it was known to be non-tainting.
There was much controversy about the most suitable timber between the two species for butter boxes. The general opinion in Australia then was that white pine was the only timber that did not taint butter. However, they were more ambivalent overseas.
Messrs D G Brims veneer wire band butter box factory at Milton in Brisbane, 1932. Photo J A Lunn.
The London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in 1906:
“It is not the case that buyers and handlers of colonial butter here, bother themselves at all about the wood of which the boxes are made. I speak in reference to the frequent statements in the Australian papers regarding criticism of the Queensland pine boxes. I have spoken about this matter to several practical men, and they tell me that no objection has been raised to the use of these boxes, and there is no evidence that can be got at here that butter packed in Queensland pine boxes is ‘tainted’ on arrival after its long passage. English buyers prefer a white box, and the New Zealand kauri pine box would, if the point were raised, be preferred to the Queensland box, but the matter as regards this end of the business is of extreme insignificance”.
In 1903-4, the newly formed Commonwealth government increased the butter export business. Queensland expected it would obtain the lion’s share of the manufacture of butter boxes because of the suitable properties of hoop pine. By 1918 of the 25 million super feet of pine required annually in Australia for butter boxes, most of it came from Queensland. The Queensland export trade in butter alone required over 1.25 million boxes per year.
By 1920, as supplies of white pine dwindled due to an embargo of its export from New Zealand, the Queensland timber control authorities refused to make hoop pine available to Victorian butter box manufacturers. The Victorians were forced to substitute with hardwood. While possessing disadvantages, they believed they could meet immediate needs.
Western District Co-operative Box Company, which owned the butter factory at Warrnambool, bought abandoned agricultural land in the Otways and began harvesting mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) for a short period after a neutral coating of casein was developed to reduce the risk of taint.
Butter boxes were initially crudely made from wooden staves with nails holding the box together. They were continuously used until they fell into disrepair. They held 56 pounds (25.432 kilograms) of butter. As plywood manufacturing began, boxes were made with veneered wood, both band-sawn and rotary peeled and 3-plywood. They were strengthened by wire bindings. The machines used for stapling the box sides to the wire bindings were capable of producing 2,000 butter boxes every eight hours.
During World War II, veneer and plywood companies were declared a Reserve Industry. Munro and Lever at Grevillea on the north coast of New South Wales made boxes using 3/16th of an inch hoop pine plywood. They produced 48,000 boxes annually, supplying butter factories at Kyogle, Ettrick, Cawongla, Wiangaree, Casino, Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads and Lismore. The ply was cut to a specific size to make up the whole box, which had to be nailed onto a wooden frame about two by half an inch.
E H F Swain described the uses of hoop pine in his book, The timbers and forest products of Queensland:
“The pine is evenly grown, with only the mildest of growing differentiations. It is a firm, strong and fine textured coniferous softwood of the Kauri type…It has considerable toughness, but easy to cut, saw, nail, dress, glue, stain and polish, and is non-aromatic and tasteless…The hoop pine is particularly good for plys and veneers. Hoop pine is also used in the planking and decking of boats and small vessels, and with its absence of aroma is the wood par excellence for butter boxes”.
As early as 1920, there were the first references in Queensland to the “grave limitations of the hoop pine forests – the chief wood asset of Queensland – the basis of its timber trade”.
The major areas where hoop pine was harvested were the Yarraman, Nanango, Kilkivan, and Gympie areas. Sadly, the destruction of areas set aside as timber reservations was advocated as necessary for the agricultural development of those districts.
The new Forestry Department raised a counter argument against permanently clearing hoop pine stands, stating that there were only 643 men employed in butter factories compared to 4,306 men employed in sawmills. Without hoop pine, the butter industry could not ship its produce to market.
The research and diligence of forestry officers proved that regrowing hoop pine could succeed after an initial common belief was that “reafforestation was not a success in [hoop] pine because it will not grow fast quality timber”. They successfully sowed seed in nurseries, tended the young plants carefully and transplanted them to the field at the opportune time. There were pine nurseries at Yarraman, Benarkin and Blackbutt. The tubed seedlings were planted in rows.
However, that was the least of their problems. In 1929, the butter box trade in Queensland was worth £80,000 to the sawmilling industry. But that year, the future of the trade was threatened. There was talk of tainted butter caused by the hoop pine boxes. Southern states that used New Zealand white pine were loud in denouncing hoop pine as a contaminant. It was not the first time the matter was raised. Timber taint by hoop pine had been mentioned periodically since 1905 when the State Dairy Expert recommended that pine for the boxes be well seasoned to alleviate the problem.
The Queensland Forestry Board took immediate steps “to test the complaint and locate, if practicable, the reason for the existence of wood taint in the year’s output, however small its proportions”.
The investigation narrowed the source to hoop pine or white pine. Tests were carried out on the moisture content of samples of both woods. In the initial test results, lack of seasoning, the inclusion of ‘sinker’ pine (“dark-brown odiferous heartwood”) by unscrupulous millers and air pockets in the boxes causing butter oxidation were suspected. They considered that better methods of papering the butter would reduce the incidence of taint.
Although the committee boasted that “no timber produces any more satisfactory results than properly seasoned Queensland pine (hoop pine)”, research into the problem continued. In 1933, a policy was issued stating that hoop pine butter boxes were to be sprayed with a casein formulation to prevent taint.
Before World War II and more so afterwards, the end of Baltic pine imports used for linings and flooring created an enormous demand for hoop pine to fill the void. Government estimates in 1937 indicated that approximately 8,000,000 super feet of Queensland hoop pine was available annually to manufacture butter boxes.
However, due to the unavailability of white pine and a suggestion that supplies of Queensland hoop pine may be exhausted in 10 years, the Department of Commerce proposed experimenting with boxes made from wood fibre compositions.
In New South Wales, the Forestry Commission carried out trials of hemlock for butter box manufacture. In the end, they decided that for any development of any softwood plantation project, it was essential to grow species of timber that would have as wide a range of uses as possible, with case timber as a secondary consideration. Plus, hemlock was not regarded as a building timber. The hoop pine plantations established on the north coast were intended for butter boxes as soon as thinnings were available.
To read Mr Onfray’s report in full go to https://www.robertonfray.com/category/forestry/
