About UsSVRRAI background
The SVRRAI most recently reformed in 1995, although various ratepayer groups have existed over the last 80 years. The SVRRAI deals with issues affecting the locality and has the following values:
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Who can join?
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We always welcome new members to the Sawyers Valley Residents and Ratepayers Association Inc.
We invite anybody interested in the issues and topics we focus our efforts on, to join. Our regular meetings provide an open forum for the discussion of significant and relevant points of importance to the Sawyers Valley community. How Can You Join? To join we need a completed application form and membership dues for the first year. Please contact us for more information and a copy of the application. Membership fees remain unchanged at $5 per household. Everyone is encouraged to pay their household fee by the end of June. This can be done by sending a cheque payment to Sawyers Valley Residents and Ratepayers Association Inc 20 Leather Green Sawyers Valley 6074 Payments can be made in person at any of the meetings. |
Our History
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SAWYERS VALLEY
Sawyers Valley derived its name from the trade most commonly practised by those who settled here. A sawpit, with hand sawyers hard at work and a settlement of thatched "V" huts (so called from their resemblance to an inverted letter "V") was noted in the area as early as the 1860's. The timber trade was the mainstay of the place for many years. A railway station named Sawyers Valley was opened in Sawyers Valley in 1884. Landgate Sawyers and shingle splitters . . Sawyers Valley, one of the earliest settlements in Mundaring, traces its origins to the 1860s when pit sawyers and shingle splitters lived and worked in the area. Sawpits used to cut planks, the top sawyer keeping the 2 metre saw on a guideline and the bottom sawyer often working up to his knees in water and sawdust, can still be discerned in the bush. Convict connections Many of the sawyers were former convicts or ticket of leave men (conditional release). Cementing the small settlement’s association with convicts, a depot there housed men sentenced to labour on the colony’s roads. Mounted police from the nearest station at The Lakes patrolled frequently. Sawpits give way to steam The construction of the Eastern Railway through the centre of the settlement in the 1880s led timber merchant Edmund Lacey to establish the Enterprise Steam Saw Mill, employing dozens of sawyers. Some ex-convict pit-sawyers stayed and are remembered today in street names e.g. Lot Leather who established a store and hotel. Firewood and fruit The settlement, which began as a scattered encampment of canvas tents and timber huts, was declared an official townsite on 28th October 1898 after 35 years of settlement. Sawyers Valley was named for its pioneers but the steam mill closed and firewood became the focus, the hewers and woodcutters often supplementing what they made from orchards. Mundaring & Hills Historical Society The town of Sawyers Valley began as a pit sawyer's settlement in the 1860s. Many of the early timber workers were expiree convicts or convicts working out their ticket-of-leave passes. The work was hard with one sawyer on the top of the log guiding the downstroke of the two-metre long saw blade and below, often standing for hours in mud and sawdust at the bottom of the deep pit, was another sawyer, guiding the upstroke. Even today, many of the original sawpits can still be seen. Although timber tracks off the York Road were evident by the 1840s, the first scattered settlements of pit sawyers and shingle splitters were located in the Sawyers Valley area. The men tended to live in 'V' huts, a timber framed dirt floored shelter covered with either blackboy spines, reeds or paper bark, and with a mud fireplace or chimney. These huts and sawpits were located in the compacted gravel soils of the valleys. The large jarrah trees on the slopes above were felled and then moved down by jacks, wedges and manpower to rest on bearers above the pit. With one sawyer on top and one or two below, the logs were cut into lengths using hand held two metre saws. Amongst the group of sawyers in this area were ex-convicts Henry Howe, Henry Coles, and Lot Leather. They remained in the area as charcoal burners, providers of firewood for the Eastern Railway, and in Lot Leather's case, food and drink at his Sawyers Valley store and hotel. For a 20-year period from the 1880s, the small-scale sawyers were replaced by steam sawmills, and the first of these was E.G. Lacey's Enterprise Steam Sawmill. From 1st October 1882, he obtained a 14-year lease on 2,880 acres north of Sawyers Valley and spent 4000 pounds on equipment. The mill employed up to 25 men cutting sawn timber, firewood, and timber piles for the Fremantle jetty. Between 1884 and 1888, Lacey licensed sawyers to cut timber from designated Special Timber Areas. In 1888, following Lacey's bankruptcy, the mill was taken over by Alexander Forrest's Gill and Company. Under F.D. Good's management from the mid-1890s until 1895, it employed up to 70 men, cutting up to 180 loads of timber a week. After Alexander Forrest and Joe McDowell amalgamated their interests to form the Gill McDowell Jarrah Company Ltd, they operated the Sawyer's Valley mill until 1899. In the area, another 30 men were employed in the Gem Saw Mill and the Federation Saw Mill. With the withdrawal of the larger companies, the area reverted to small scale sleeper hewing and firewood cutting. From 1919 to 1922 the Perth Firewood Company operated a tramway south-east from Sawyers Valley using mainly Italian and Yugoslav woodcutters. Between 1949 and 1961, using a workforce with some European post war refugees ('displaced persons'), Robert Malcolm-Smith operated a saw mill in an area west of Sawyers Valley. The men and their families, originally from the migrant camp at Northam, were housed on the site, in small two roomed timber cottages. The former site of the Sawyers Valley Saw Mill is located north of the Saw Pits and King Jarrah Tree. The large jarrah tree and saw pit are important historically as a monument to the forest/timber industry that established the hills communities and the early days of the colony. It has very high social, historic and aesthetic significance for the Shire and the State as an illustration, close to the city, of what the early timber industry demanded of its workers. The size and scale of the tree has landscape significance and the potential to raise community awareness of the importance of our native forests environmentally and historically, illustrating the magnitude of what both the trees and the original forest must have been. Heritage Council of WA WEIR VALLEY FARM, MUNDARING, WA: LAND IN TRANSITION by Jenny Mills is an interesting article about some of the history of Sawyers Valley and the Hills. SAWYERS VALLEY VICTORIAN SCHOOLHOUSE HISTORICAL MAPS OF SAWYERS VALLEY |