Once were papermakers

While in Tasmania's north west, I paid a sentimental visit to one of my former workplaces there.

The Wesley Vale paper mill was a bright, shiny, state-of-the-art plant when I first worked there 40 years ago. It was somewhat inefficient, in that the original plan had always been to expand it with more paper machines and/or a gigantic new pulp mill, but in those days, what the hell, inefficient was OK, and I was paid quite well to make it slightly less inefficient each year.

The company in those days was Associated Pulp and Paper Mills. Later it became part of Australian Paper, and something called PaperlinX was involved too for a while. I was based most of the time at the Burnie site - the older, smokier and smellier 'Pulp', as it was known.

Tasmanian paper mills in those days were highly polluting, and tended to devour large swathes of pristine native forest for their raw materials. The Pulp was about as bad as they got. Both it and the Wesley Vale site closed finally in 2010. The local marine environment is much better off for it. Unfortunately native forests continue to be cut and woodchipped - supplying overseas paper mills instead these days. Few local jobs are involved, and it brings in not that much cash. So it goes in third world economies like Australia's.


When I pulled up to survey the sorry scene the other week, I saw three or four cars parked there. That seemed to imply that some minor enterprise may have found a use for the premises, but I suspect attempts to sell the site for anything more grandiose have so far come to nothing.