Transcript of an Interview with Mr William Cleary regarding the Cleary family in the Timber Industry at Douglas Park. 4th September, 1991.
The Cleary brothers were born and raised at Hoxton Park. Dan Cleary was born at 3rd Avenue, Hoxton Park in 1898.
They had their first timber sawmill at Glenfield adjacent to the railway station, as at that time the major method of transportation was by rail. The brothers lived or camped on site at the mill.
As the Liverpool district was cut out of timber they moved to Douglas Park in c1920 and set up a sawmill on the left of the railway crossing as it is approached from Campbelltown. The mill was situated alongside the railway siding on land leased from the Department of Railways. Initially they camped at the mill site but later purchased land on the corner opposite the mill (where the town houses are now built), and on this site they built a house and maintained paddocks for their horses.
John Joseph Cleary and Lachlan Buggy at mill Douglas Park, with Tom Montgomery "Monty" on railway truck.
November 1922. Photograph provided by Peter Monaghan.
The brothers in the business at the mill were Dan, Jack and Pat, with another brother William being employed by them.
The mill was steam driven and had a block and a rip bench. They used the scantlings (scrap timber) and sawdust to fire the steam engine, nothing was wasted. They only needed oil and water for the engine so it was a very economical means of power.
The timber processed through the mill was predominantly blockwood used to supply factories and hospitals or any activity that used steam for power. At the time electricity as a source of power was still in its infancy. The mill also supplied telegraph poles to Canberra and Sydney as increasingly electricity took over from steam.
The mill employed a fairly large team. There were the four brothers and normally about four others including the bush cutters. They also employed a number of teamsters. As well
as the bush cutters they employed, the brothers purchased from property owners who were doing their own cutting and from contractors cutting on Crown or private property. Bill Cleary recalls some of the men who worked at the mill or as cutters; Bill Adams, Fergie Chisholm, George Newcombe and some of the Cummings and Dredge families.
The timber cut for the mill came in the main from the Wilton district. The Clearys purchased property of their own to obtain timber, probably up to 1000 acres.
The mill had their own teamsters with Dan Cleary being the head teamster. They used all horse drawn equipment and had about 50 horses of their own. They operated both drays and teams of 5 horses, usually 2 pair and a leader or one horse in the shafts and 2 pair. When using the drays there could be 2 or 3 drays controlled by one man on horseback. On some short hauls there was only the horse pulling the dray who started off with a "giddup Dobbin" and took the dray to its destination without supervision.
Daniel James Cleary and his team, Douglas Park,
7 March 1924. (photo provided by Peter Monaghan)
When hauling with the log carts from Wilton to Douglas Park some of the corners were so tight the teamster would be forced to uncouple part of the team and place them at the rear of the cart so that it could be shunted back and forth around the sharp curves. On the steep hills logs had to be tied behind the cart to act as an additional brake. On other occasions a small log was placed between the spokes of the wheels to act as a lock and the cart would be pulled down the hill in a skidding fashion.
To load the heavy logs on the carts poles were placed from the ground and running up to the cart top and the logs pulled up these skids by rope, with often the horses doing the pulling. Another method was to load from an embankment. To lift the higher logs to the top a wooden gantry or tree bough was used.
Although there was never a Cleary sawmill at Maldon station Bill Cleary believes the brothers often carted logs there to avoid the difficult trip from Wilton to Douglas Park. When they had enough logs at the siding a rail car was ordered to ship the logs out to their destination.
above: William Anthony Cleary with unidentified passenger on the Clearys' first motor vehicle,
a Fordson tractor with home made dray, at Glenfield, November 1923. (photo from Peter Monaghan)
The Clearys eventually moved from horse power to the use of motor-vehicles and their first was a Fordson tractor which they converted to a chain driven timber dray. They later moved onto Leylands and Thornycrofts but eventually settled for Internationals. When they moved into the contracting business they had up to 50 of these vehicles on the books.
Dan, Jack and Pat moved out of the timber industry at Douglas Park in c1936. Jack went to the South Coast, Pat to Parramatta and Dan moved into the trucking and earth moving business at Camden. William Anthony remained at Douglas Park and carried on with some blockwood milling but mainly concentrated on trucking.
Bill Cleary also recalls his father teaming up with Dick Hayter after WWII, sometime in the early l950's to take Cedar out of the Kowmung. Bill recalls going with ? Davis and ? Chalker on the last of those Cedar expeditions.
Although Dan Cleary was a great exponent of steam as a method of power, Bill Cleary says his father couldn' t wait to get away from it as he had to be up an hour earlier than everyone else to stoke up and have a head of steam ready for the men to start work when they arrived.
