Piney Lakes

PINEY LAKES

The following are excerpts from the Melville History Society's newsletters. As can be read, the reserve has changed dramatically over the years.

September 1985's MHS Newsletter

Piney Lakes Reserve is the site of an early farm, piggery, which was established around 1914. In 1926 the area was purchased by the Forestry Department. The farm house was upgraded as living quarters for the foresters but was demolished in the mid 1930s. The result is an 'oasis' in the middle of a portion of the Sommerville Pine Plantation. The garden on the edge of a small lake is all that remains. Bougainvillea, cork oak trees imported from Portugal, the ubiquitous Japanese pepper, camphor laurel, ti-trees and olive trees, common to many early farms, are just some of the flora in the midst of the depleted pine plantation.

June 1992's MHS Newsletter

Members and friends attended a WA Week walk at Piney Lakes organised by May Flanagan. Twenty-two persons joined her on a leisurely stroll through the area. Guest speaker Jane Rodda, who conducted an ecological study with a management plan for the site in 1986, talked about the area and its natural heritage from the pristine wetlands to the introduced cork trees and garden which once surrounded a farmhouse.

Piney Lakes has an interesting history. In 1986 Pat Barrett Lennard, the Society's oral historian, spoke to Mr Dick Perry, a retired forester, about his involvement in the area. Mr Perry told of his experiments to find the most suitable trees and his trip to Portugal to select pine seeds. The area was developed as a pine plantation in 1927 when a tent town was set up for workers. Beside the lake itself was once the nursery where Mr Perry planted the new trees. Remnants of his experiments are still evident. Seeds of the magnificent cork oak trees which are flourishing in the area were also brought home to Australia from Portugal in a thermos flask.

June 1993's MHS Newsletter

At our May meeting Jan Rodda and David Kaesehagen gave us a very interesting talk on the proposals and alternatives for this historic and delightful area of Melville. Jan gave us some idea of what the vegetation and fauna were like before the first white settlers moved in. David talked about the future plans.

Anne Reid is in the process of transcribing a tape recording of the early days of forester Dick Perry who was in charge of the development of Piney Lakes as a pine nursery and plantation in 1927. Mr Perry talks about selecting the site for the pine plantation, testing the soil and preparing the land. Here is an excerpt: "The banksias were all felled at ground level. There were no bull dozers in those days and the trees were felled as closely to the ground as we could get ... mullinizing was the name we used to call this. I don't know how this name originated ... The jarrah trees were felled at axe handle height ... but before felling, we also arranged to try and find a market for the wood that we were producing. The banksia was all sold for firewood and any logs, which would make mill logs, were sold to saw millers ... There weren't many mill logs because the best of them had been removed by fellers in the early days of settlement. There were old saw pits all over the jarrah areas showing where these big trees had been felled."