Logging began in the 1860's but the success of this was very much restricted by the rough country and difficulty of transporting the massive logs through the rainforest.

In 1884, the Lahey family established a sawmill at Canungra; this made transporting the timber a lot easier, as the area around the sawmill was used extensively.

By 1900, the timber close to the sawmill was depleted and a tramway was built to transport logs from the Coomera River Valley ,and by 1913, 26.5 km of tram line had been built.

In 1918, the construction of roads began to allow trucks to carry much more timber from the outlying areas such as Mt. Cainbable which had vast reserves of Hoop Pine.

Romeo Lahey designed, surveyed and supervised the construction (see below) of "Laheys Road" which allowed access to timber from Saranbah to Mt. Cainbable and the State Forest and Lahey properties adjoining the National Park (declared in 1915).

The declaration of the National Park in 1915, effectively locked up many of the large timber reserves left in the area, and logging continued only until the mid 1930's.

The photographs on this page were  kindly donated by (Big) Peter O'Reilly from O'Reilly's Rainforest Guesthouse.

The logs were brought to the sawmill by bullock team

Many forestry huts were built as well in outlying areas.