Introduction
The Toolangi Forest is located 65 miles from Melbourne and is located at the centre of Victoria. The forest has 66 thousand hectares.
The Toolangi Forest is public, so it belongs to the Australian people. It can be used for recreational purposes like camping, bird-watching, picknicks and also educational purposes like ecological studies and school excursions. The Forest is a very important resource for people in Melbourne, even if they never visit, because it’s used as ‘carbon sink’, because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So having forests near big cities help offset some carbon dioxide emissions.
Historical records have shown that the flora and fauna of forests and woodlands have provided many essential products for Aboriginal people, including food, medicines, and raw materials for construction, arts and crafts. Indigenous Australians have lived on the Australian continent for over 50.000 years. Over this time, forests have been an integral part of Aboriginal.
Forests were not only important to Indigenous, they were vital to the european settlers who came to Australia in the late eighteenth century. Timber was the most readily available building material at the time and was used to create the foundations of the new colonies.
After the europeans settled, all land in Australia was declared government property. Forested areas which were not given to individuals were declared as multiple-use forests, timber reserves, nature conservation reserves.
The first steam railway in Australia opened in Melbourne in 1874. And at the same time, the colonies were expanding rapidly, providing new markets for timber products. In the 1920s, road transport started to become important for the sawmilling industry. They also had a dramatic impact on the social framework of sawmilling communities. With ready road access to forests, the families of loggers and millers no longer needed to live in remote locations, but instead could live in...