Those early years saw small rough timber towns springing up everywhere, and huge timber jinkers could be heard creaking their way through the forests. 

Over the years the rough shanty towns started to take on a more permanent look and it seemed nothing could stop this prosperous timber operation from going on forever but virtually stop it did. World War I and the Great Depression of the early 30s saw the whole of the timber operation on its knees.

With more homes being built from brick, and timber railway sleepers being replaced by steel and concrete, the appetite of the community for timber had taken a breather. But timber towns were not to die altogether, and some of the larger settlements and the better-run mills survived.

 With a more balanced approach to managing the forests with reforestation programs set up in the 1950s and 60s, and modern equipment being installed into the mills, an orderly rejuvenation of the West's timber towns was well on the way.

 Today, a visit to this part of Australia reflects the new and the old. Some of the old settlements have been taken over by the forest, and there are no bullock-drawn timber jinkers lumbering through the bush.  There is memorabilia everywhere indoor and outdoor museums, and relics of the past.  The larger timber towns now have a modern look about them, with new homes springing up, shops opening and high-tech equipment churning away in the mills still standing on the edge of town.

 But for all this modernisation, they are unmistakably timber towns and always will be.  Many old mill workers cottages, long-abandoned, have now been restored and some public halls built in a bygone era have been brought back to life.

Town life is more diversified and new industries are being established, but their allegiance to timber lives on wood turners, wood sculptors and craftsmen abound, satisfying a new demand for the timbers that these folk know so well.

	Take a walk around the timber towns as you tour this Tall Timber Country; you wont find it hard to see how much of the former charm has been retained and in a wave of nostalgia try to imagine just how mill town life must have been a century or more ago. And out in the forests, now strictly controlled to ensure that the demand for timber is handled in a way that will see that the resource is renewed and regenerated for future generations, modern forestry management is giving the Tall Timber Country back to the people.
		It's not just the trees that will captivate you...