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RICHARDS & SONS LOGGING WINCH SITE

Location ROAD 5M MCMAHONS CREEK, YARRA RANGES SHIRE File Number 11/003147-01 Level Heritage Inventory Site

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Statement of Significance

What is significant?
Richards & Sons carried on logging and sawmilling operations in the Starvation Creek area from 1916 to 1938. Their last steam log winching station was established on Roy Spur c1936. The family abandoned the remaining plant after access tramways to it were destroyed in the 1939 bushfires.

How is significant?
Richards & Sons Log Winching site is of historical, archaeological, and scientific significance to the State of Victoria.

Why is it significant?
The Warburton district was Victoria's premier logging area for the first three decades of the twentieth century, and the district's sawmillers played an important role in the introduction of new methods and technology. Richards & Sons log winching site is important for its manifestation of this facet of the State's forest industry.

Richards & Sons Log Winching site is scientifically significant because of its extraordinary intactness and being one of about a dozen in situ historic steam winches still surviving in Victoria. The site is especially unique in containing two different types of winches illustrating the replacement of old adaptive technology with new purpose built imported machinery. Only one other single cylinder steam logging engine is known in the State and the Russell Allport double drum outrigger steam logging winch is rare in Victoria.

Richards & Sons Log Winching site is archaeologically significant because of the its potential to yield information on the technological development of Victoria's sawmilling and logging industry.