Wielangta forest facts for kids

The Sandspit River in a cool temperate rainforest area

The Wielangta forest is in south-east Tasmania, Australia. It is notable for its role in a 2006 court case that called into question the effectiveness of Australia's cooperative Commonwealth-State forest management regime known as Regional Forest Agreements.

Name

Wielangta is an Aboriginal name of high trees.

Environment

The Wielangta forest is part of remnant glacial refugia forest and contains blue gum eucalypt forest and pockets of cool temperate rainforest. The forest is a key habitat of rare and threatened species, including the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, swift parrot, Wielangta stag beetle, spotted-tail quoll and eastern barred bandicoot. A rare orchid (Genoplesium nudum) has also been discovered in the forest. The forest forms part of the South-east Tasmania Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because of its importance in the conservation of a range of woodland birds.

Wielangta tram

Pioneers at a hut in Wielangta Forest, around 1910

The Wielangta tram was a more than 6.5 kilometres (4 mi) long forest railway, which ran on steel and wooden rails along the Sandspit River from the Wielangta forest to the sawmills in the Wielangta settlement and from there to the east coast opposite of Maria Island, where the sawn timber was loded onto ships via a pier on Rheban beach south of Orford. Its steam locomotive had been built by Russell Allport & Co in Hobart.

In its heyday Wielangta had several sawmills, a general store, a bakery, a blacksmith and a school. The sawmill settlement was inhabited by about a hundred pioneers. They worked there from 1911 to 1924, before the sawmill was closed due to the lack of wood in the area and the workers moved on. The settlement was devastated by bushfires in the 1920s and abandoned in 1928.

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  Transport of fly wheel, 1911

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  Transport of mill boiler

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  Transport of mill equipment

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  Bridge

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  Logging

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  Break time