The story of the "Forest to Paper" display case.

By John C Medwin, Volunteer Tourism Information Officer, and long term employee of the owners. APPM, North Broken Hill, and Australian Paper.

St Patrick’s day 17th March 2010 and the Irish must have blessed us as Tasmanian Paper authorised the removal of the display case to the Makers’ Workshop to go on display after renovation.

With the immanent sale or closure of the Tasmanian operations, I feared that the show piece would disappear forever. To someone’s shed and never be seen again, or maybe to the tip and destroyed as something of no value, or lastly, somewhere that the history of paper making industry in Burnie would be preserved.

The management of the Makers’ Workshop were advised that if they were at all interested, it was theirs after I had made the initial enquiries with Mr Chris Hind and his staff at Tasmanian Paper, Burnie. Our thanks go to him for having the foresight to allow its removal and the reason why, Now comes the renovations from its past dilapidated condition to one of pristine condition once again.

The cabinet with its glass sliding doors was built by George Butcher of Ulverstone, a Cabinet Maker employed by Associated Pulp and Paper Mills in the period between 1955 and 1960 although there is no record of employment past 1950 available. This time line was arrived at by speaking to the only carpenter employee still living Charles Whitton remembered it being made after the first continuous digester was operational. That project took place while I was an Apprentice Fitter and Turner at APPM. Naturally, there were others involved with its building. Bill Birchenough the pattern maker turned the cylinders on the "paper machine" from celery or huon pine. The railway truck and tray under the "Wet end" of the paper machine was the work on Mervyn "Speed" Atkinson a real character who was a plumber and sheet metal worker. The painted signs and original case varnishing were done by Allan Sutton foreman painter during those years. The original ticket writing came from the drawing office tracers which accounted for the symetrical lettering. Due to water damage these have all been replaced with computer gererated tickets.

The finished show case was then screwed to the western wall of the lift from the cutter room floor to the finishing room above where some 200 women were employed to sort and count the paper sent up from the cutters below. It was here that the mill tour guides recapped to visitors the paper making process. Over the passing years it fell into the various stages of neglect till now.

For those who view it will see that it depicts exactly how paper was made at that time. From the harvested forests at Hampshire and Surrey Hills administered by then Associated Forest Holdings Pty Ltd where the logs were then transported to Burnie Board and Timber, later to be known as Burnie Timber. (Both were subsidiary divisions of APPM.) It was then sawn into graded timber and the residue chipped and sent on a conveyor belt to the wood room at APPM to feed into the waiting digestors. Then the process of converting raw wood chips to a cellulose fibre without the other impurities began. The old static digesters were later replaced by the two Solman process continuous digesters developed by Dr Sloman at the Burnie Mill's Research Department.

The chips were cooked with a caustic soda solution in the super steam heated continuous digesters where the separation took place. The black liquor containing the unwanted impurities went to the rotary incinerators, evaporators, and lime kiln to recover the caustic soda, and carbon. The remaining fibre went to the bleach towers to be mixed with a liquid chlorine solution till the pulp became almost pure bleached white in colour. Brighteners were added at a later stage to achieve the high white of copy paper required in today's market place.
The Chlorine was produced using electrolytic cells where strong brine (salt water) NaCl + H2O passed over anodes and mercury to separate the Chlorine (Cl) from the sodium (Na). The resulting fluid was the bleaching agent required, and caustic soda (NaOH) used in the "cooking" of the chips. Today the milky chlorine fluid (ClO2) it is referred to as a dioxin and a pollutant.

The next stage of the process took the pulp to the refiners where it was ground to a finer consistency, alum, clay, and cationic starch (this replaced resin) were added as bonding and filling agents, as well as dyes to colour the paper, or later to produce the bright white bond 80gsm grade paper now known as Reflex Copy paper. At this point it went into stock chests from which it was pumped up to the waiting paper machines to be formed into a usable commodity.

The final stage of the paper manufacture was the cutting of the rolls of paper known as webs into folio sized sheets that the girls in the finishing room sorted and counted by hand on peace work rates, and wrapped by the men ready for sale. (Comment made by Mrs Kate Lincoln) "Girls who had a goal to achieve made a lot of money with bonuses received, others worked hard but never got to the stage of earning that amount of money. The slackers made minimum wage and if not encouraged to leave, or left as disgruntled employees. The ball was always in their court."

Finally, the counted unwrapped reams were sent to the guillotines to be cut into smaller sizes as required to fill specific orders. Such as the now A3, an A4, sized sheets purchased at retail outlets. In those day it was known as foolscap, or quarto with the off cuts being sent back for re-pulping along with the reject paper the girls had discarded as being of faulty quality.

APPM was a family orientated company. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters found ready employment there and by 1960 the golden year for the company, they directly employed 3500 people and many hundreds of others indirectly. The company believed that supplying health care, and the opportunity to build their own homes with low cost loans (2% p/a) refunded if paid in full and on time were to see many families achieve a good start in their married lives. Names like Alex Muir, Tom Coleman, H.K. Sherriffs, Horrie Hodge, and Jack Evans were long term members of the APPM Council that oversaw the welfare of all employees. With the take overs by subsequent owners the APPM Council faded away leaving only the company now known as Healthcare Insurance as a reminder of the past glory years.

By 2009 Australian Paper employed nearly 400 people across two mill sites. Such had been the impact of modern technology and the demands of new owners to downsize. To become more cost effective in a competitive market place. This has become the sword in 2010 now hanging over the industry in Burnie. To be either sold, or closed down and the site remediated.

As the image depicts, there is a difference in the paper produced at Burnie and that of the paper manufactured at Maryvale in Gippsland, Victoria. They still can not match the colour standards achieved at the Burnie Mill, even after transfering the technolgy to Victoria. The Chemists who developed the colour coding have either left the company or moved on.

Burnie owes much to the vision of these men who worked tirelessly to create the paper industry that made Burnie the city it is today. One could only hope that it would survive post June 2010. Unfortunately this was not to be the case as the last of the cutting and wrapping machines were closed down for good on Tuesday 27th July 2010 ending the production era.

One of the great things about the Makers' Workshop is that there are a number of volunteers who spent much, if not all their working lives in the paper industry in Burnie. Feel free to ask for information when you visit us. Alternatively, visitors who visit the Makers' Workshop and Visitor Information Centre should take the time to watch the projected images in the atrium of the building. to get a feel for the industry in the period from 1938 through to the late 1960’s.

In the near future Mr Alan Jamieson will be releasing a book that traces the history of the papermill in Burnie with emphasis on Gerald Mussen whose vision it was in the late 1920's to establish a paper making industry in Burnie. I look forward to the launch and signing of his work.
A city of innovators.
A city of makers.
A city we are all proud to call home.

Posted on behalf of the management of the: Makers' Workshop.
2 Bass Highway,
Burnie, Tasmania. Australia.
Post/Zip Code: 7320

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Retrieval.
From information supplied by Philip Weeks (Silcar Maintenance)
Tas Paper: Chris Hind, and Field Services truck driver, name not known.
Silcar Maintenance: Neil Dixon.
Contract employee: Tony Breen.
Restoration program Makers' Workshop volunteers:
Alison Burgess, Kate Lincoln, John Kuys, Neil Thorne, and author.
Up dated: 15th August 2010
http://john-c-medwin.blogspot.com/2010/08/burnie-celebrates-74-years-of-paper.html