This month features a photo essay by historian, Ron Cooke, extracted from his book Logging the Punga which he co-authored with the late Ken Anderson and Audrey Walker. The 390-page book covers a detailed history of the Manunui branch of the enterprising King Country sawmilling operation of Ellis & Burnand. Serving as a follow-up to Trevor Coker’s feature on ‘How Steam Haulers Opened up the Bush’ (NZ Logger, May 2018), the focus here is on some of their steam haulers not previously mentioned.
As the clouds of steam show in this 1911 view, a lot of development had occurred in the seven years since JW Ellis, Harry Burnand and Henry Valder, along with Frank Moore of the Pungapunga Timber Company, had begun planning the building of their sawmills. Geo Gardner & Sons was now operating Moore’s mill, the first mill the lokey would arrive at when returning across the Punga bridge with a load of logs from the bush. Next was E&B’s sawmill with the new box factory partly constructed beside it. A fire had claimed the first factory some months before. The steam rising between the Mill and Box Factory pinpoints that the “Woodpecker” lokey is on the job. Further back the Ellis Veneer factory is nearing completion and Manunui School can be detected behind it. A locomotive on the Main Trunk Line is contributing to the dramatic scene and across the line farmers had been busy.
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