Melbourne, Thursday 2 February 1939

Your opinion is that fires are generally caused by some person, not by natural causes?
I do. I think they are mostly caused by people through want of knowledge. I do not think they are done wilfully.

Do you think any of them are caused by natural causes?
We know lightning causes fire. In fact, Mr Saxton told us he saw lightning strike a tree near Mr Ingram's mill and they had a real job to put it out.

[Mr Gowans] I suppose we can take it from your evidence that you belong to the school of thought which believes in burning off as a preventive measure. You know, of course, that there is another school of thought that this burning off causes incalculable damage to the forests?
Yes, I know that; but of course mountain ash forests are very difficult to deal with.

Mills are nearly always placed on the rim of the Mountain Ash belt, because they do not like the thick timber to build in. They bring the timber out from the forest to the mill.

To burn the mountain ash country is a very ticklish job. If you burn it with a heavy fire, you kill the timber. In the old days when timber was plentiful we did burn forests. There was no restriction. I have never known a miller to kill timber, because he was looking after it.

I suppose as they got more mills in the bush, and inexperienced people were getting into the bush it was absolutely necessary to put the precautions on and stop those people because they would have burnt the world. It is only people with bush fire experience who know when and how to burn. You get that experience with time.

[Questioned about the effect of frequent burning of mountain ash forests]After a given period you would lose your big trees and have no young ones?
That is the real problem facing us.

Do you see a way out?
You cannot burn in that way.