5 Rooted in Time: King Edward Big Tree - The Woodcutters
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THE WOODCUTTERS There were forests on the slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain when the Dutch set up their Company’s Garden there in 1652. Timber was then one of life’s most important commodities. But by the early 1700s explorers were beginning to bring back news of vast areas of forest in ‘Outenikwaland’ (the present day Garden Route). Two important botanists visited this area in the 1700s: Carl Thunberg, who would later take over the chair of botany at the University of Uppsala from Linneus (Carl von Linné), and Professor Anders Sparrman, who sailed with Captain Cook on his voyages of discovery. Both made favourable reports to the colonial government about the size of these forests, and the government set up the first woodcutter’s post in the area at Hoogekraal, near George, in 1777. And the race was on. The forests of Outenikwaland (later Outeniqualand) were harvested at an incredible rate. The work itself was done by a group of people largely of Dutch-Afrikaans origin who came to be known as the woodcutters. Usually desperately poor, and generally illiterate, they sold the timber they cut by hand for pitifully small amounts to merchants in George and Knysna. The woodcutters felled enormous areas of timber by hand - and cut the logs from their felled trees into manageable sized planks and boards by hand, too. “The Woodcutter’s day started with the sun. He would either walk the few miles of forest trail to the tree upon which he was working or wake up beside it to the smell of a smouldering ironwood fire and old ash and the clean scent of fresh wood-chips. Soon there would be the fragrance of coffee and tobacco smoke and then, with the first shafts of sunlight, the ringing of axes would begin again. A man and his sons might spend as long as a month working a giant yellowwood or stinkwood tree.” Hjalmar Thesen, Country Days They lived isolated and insular lives in the forests. Their homes were often no more than crude one- or two-roomed huts: they had no incentive to build more permanent structures since they were living on Government land, and they moved around from time to time in order to be close to the trees they could fell. Hygiene was poor, and food was often scarce (the sweet potato was a staple of their diets), but they were renowned for their fierce independence, and their love of the trees. “The woodcutters were self-employed, willing and able to work, but often lacked the necessary capital, training and, most important, the opportunity to benefit from their labours. “In trying to account for the poverty of the woodcutter population, it is of little explanatory value to adopt the notion that they were 'prisoners of their culture' which implies 'that once a people has acquired a pattern of behaviour more suited to the past, once they have been imbued with values and norms of a bygone age, they can simply not adapt themselves to a modern economy.' On the contrary, the impact of 'modern economy', and more specifically merchant capital in the area, had more to do with the poverty of the woodcutters than their presumed 'backwardness' and 'laziness'.” ~ A.M. Grundlingh In 1939, the right of the woodcutters to work trees in the forests was annulled, and the Woodcutters’ Annuities Act providing for the payment of a small pension to each of them was passed by Parliament. “The state-owned indigenous forest of the Southern Cape were granted a well-deserved rest. “What was left... was a battlefield of devastation. It seemed best to leave the healing of the worst wounds to nature. “In the early ‘sixties the natural recovery of the forest had progressed so far that it was deemed possible and desirable to take steps toward active rehabilitation. On the basis of intensive research and planning, a comprehensive system of natural forest conservation was developed and, in 1967, put into operation.” ~ F. von Breitenbach ‘ Southern Cape Forests & Trees’ M Y S T E R I O U S F OR E S T D W E L L E R S “They were as mysterious as the deepest forest gorge where few dared to venture, they could converse with one another in a secret code so that one of them could quickly drag away the bush buck - under the keepers noses – that lay strangled in an illegal snare. They admitted their deepest fears with the frankness of children, shared their last piece of bread or sweet potato with each other; took the axe from a weak one’s hands and hacked his wood for him.” Dalene Matthee, author. THE WOOD CUTTERS LIFE FOR THE WOODCUTTERS
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Transcript of 5 Rooted in Time: King Edward Big Tree - The Woodcutters
THE WOODCUTTERS
There were forests on the slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain when the Dutch set up their Company’s Garden there in 1652. Timber was then one of life’s most important commodities. But by the early 1700s explorers were beginning to bring back news of vast areas of forest in ‘Outenikwaland’ (the present day Garden Route).
Two important botanists visited this area in the 1700s: Carl Thunberg, who would later take over the chair of botany at the University of Uppsala from Linneus (Carl von Linné), and Professor Anders Sparrman, who sailed with Captain Cook on his voyages of discovery.
Both made favourable reports to the colonial government about the size of these forests, and the government set up the first woodcutter’s post in the area at Hoogekraal, near George, in 1777.
And the race was on. The forests of Outenikwaland (later Outeniqualand) were harvested at an incredible rate. The work itself was done by a group of people largely of Dutch-Afrikaans origin who came to be known as the woodcutters.
Usually desperately poor, and generally illiterate, they sold the timber they cut by hand for pitifully small amounts to merchants in George and Knysna.
The woodcutters felled enormous areas of timber by hand - and cut the logs from their felled trees into manageable sized planks and boards by hand, too.
“The Woodcutter’s day started with the sun. He would either walk the few miles of forest trail to the tree upon which he was working or wake up beside it to the smell of a smouldering ironwood fire and old ash and the clean scent of fresh wood-chips. Soon there would be the fragrance of coffee and tobacco smoke and then, with the first shafts of sunlight, the ringing of axes would begin again. A man and his sons might spend as long as a month working a giant yellowwood or stinkwood tree.” Hjalmar Thesen, Country Days
They lived isolated and insular lives in the forests. Their homes were often no more than crude one- or two-roomed huts: they had no incentive to build more permanent structures since they were living on Government land, and they moved around from time to time in order to be close to the trees they could fell. Hygiene was poor, and food was often scarce (the sweet potato was a staple of their diets), but they were renowned for their fierce independence, and their love of the trees.
“The woodcutters were self-employed, willing and able to work, but often lacked the necessary capital, training and, most important, the opportunity to benefit from their labours.
“In trying to account for the poverty of the woodcutter population, it is of little explanatory value to adopt the notion that they were 'prisoners of their culture' which implies 'that once a people has acquired a pattern of behaviour more suited to the past, once they have been imbued with values and norms of a bygone age, they can simply not adapt themselves to a modern economy.' On the contrary, the impact of 'modern economy', and more specifically merchant capital in the area, had more to do with the poverty of the woodcutters than their presumed 'backwardness' and 'laziness'.” ~ A.M. Grundlingh
In 1939, the right of the woodcutters to work trees in the forests was annulled, and the Woodcutters’ Annuities Act providing for the payment of a small pension to each of them was passed by Parliament.
“The state-owned indigenous forest of the Southern Cape were granted a well-deserved rest.
“What was left... was a battlefield of devastation. It seemed best to leave the healing of the worst wounds to nature.
“In the early ‘sixties the natural recovery of the forest had progressed so far that it was deemed possible and desirable to take steps toward active rehabilitation. On the basis of intensive research and planning, a comprehensive system of natural forest conservation was developed and, in 1967, put into operation.” ~ F. von Breitenbach ‘Southern Cape Forests & Trees’
MYSTERIOUS FOREST DWELLERS
“They were as mysterious as the deepest forest gorge where few dared to venture, they could converse with one another in a secret code so that one of them could quickly drag away the bush buck - under the keepers noses – that lay strangled in an illegal snare. They admitted their deepest fears with the frankness of children, shared their last piece of bread or sweet potato with each other; took the axe from a weak one’s hands and hacked his wood for him.” Dalene Matthee, author.
THE WOOD
CUTTERS
LIFE FOR THE WOODCUTTERS
