Virtual reality export woodchip tour

The following is a woodchip tour which starts in the forests of East Gippsland and goes to the huge industrial pulp mills in Japan (owned by Nippon Paper) via the export mill in Geelong called Midway Pty Ltd.

The scale of these operations helps to demonstrate that clearfell logging is woodchip driven by both volume and revenue $.

Start a five stop export woodchip tour.

The Tour!

The image below shows a patch of forest in East Gippsland that was clearfell logged.The area logged is called a logging coupe. About 80% of all the trees cut down in a typical coupe are sent to be converted into woodchips.

Foothill forests north of Nowa Nowa in East Gippsland.

From the forest, whole trees (or logs) are transported by truck and stored in a huge log dump by a railway line on the south-west outskirts of Bairnsdale in Victoria waiting for loading onto rail cars.

Bairnsdale log dump yard.

The trees (or logs) are then transported by rail to Corio Bay in North Geelong in Victoria where they are woodchipped and put into a huge stack ready for loading onto a ship for export to Japan, to be made into paper.

Midway export woodchip mill in Geelong. (This area has been updated on Google Earth). The larger pile of woodchips to the left is from native forest, the other smaller, lighter coloured pile is softwood woodchips from plantation pine. Note that empty log rail carriages can be seen north of the woodchip piles. An empty ship waits to be loaded.

Most of the woodchips from Midway are exported to feed huge pulp mills in Japan owned by Nippon Paper. The Japanese trading company Mitsui helps these transactions to occur between Midway and Nippon Paper. Nippon Paper's huge pulp mills(Iwakuni) that feed on Australian native forest. The woochip stacks on the wharf are almost half a kilometre wide.

 

The last resting place for Australina woodchips (bottom of the image) includes this massive pulp mill complex in Japan called the Ishinomaki Mill. This mill is one of many owned by Nippon Paper.

What can you do to stop the destruction of our forests for woodchips?

In 2002 the Victorian State government announced that native forest logging in the Otways would be banned and that a new Great Otway National Park would be created. This occurred because logging Otways native forest was a big public issue and the Victorian Government listened. This can occur again.

The best thing you can do is help educate people about this issue by e-mailing these Google Earth Woodchip tour kmz files to friends, family, work mates etc. The more people who are made aware about what is happening to our forests the more likely governments will listen and ban clearfell logging. Right-click on the first tour file and select "email..."

Let the politicians know that you are upset by the management of Victoria's public forests, send an email to the Victorian government leaders .

Help educate people by emailing this web page to your friends, family, work mates etc.

Make a donation to the VRN campaign through the Otway Ranges Environment Network. More information about VRN and OREN.

Receive updates about the rainforest campaign by joining the VRN email list. (Not more than about one email per week or fortnight.)