Once New Zealand’s forests started to be exploited for their timber in the 19th century loggers soon came up against what seemed to be an insurmountable problem...
...mainly how to move a log in many cases weighing several tons to where it could be transported to the mill for sawing into timber.
Early efforts used bullocks, driving dams and waterways to move the massive stems and logs. However, in many cases the best timber was in places hard to access due to constraints imposed by steep terrain, deep gorges and other areas where bullocks could not be used and there was no access to waterways so they could be held behind dams and flushed downstream by water when the dam was tripped.
First mechanical steps
The first mechanical means of logging consisted of a ‘whim’, which was a vertical drum set in a frame in the ground. Usually the barrel of a suitable round tree truck was used for this. Bars were fixed into the drum, which was harnessed to horses or bullocks, so that when the animals walked around in a circle it turned the drum and wound in a rope attached to the log. This machine was no doubt a development of the anchor capstan on sailing ships, operated by sailors who inserted bars into holes on the capstan and walked around in a circle pushing on the bars to wind in the anchor chain. Laborious, but it worked.
