Ebor Sawmill, Styx River, by Ann Tündern-Smith

WARNING: Some dreadful, fatal accidents are summarised below – to let you know the dangers to which the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) sent anyone who, they insisted, had to work in a sawmill.

In Rapolas Braškus’ life story, we noted that he had been sent from Bonegilla in early 1948 to the Styx River Sawmill operated by Ebor Sawmills Pty Ltd. Even the name of the River should have been a warning.

What was the Styx?

For readers who have not brushed up their knowledge of Greek mythology lately, the Styx was the river across which Charon used to row the dead to the underworld. Its waters were believed to be poisonous.

Why would a river in New South Wales get this name? The suggestion is that it was surrounded by difficult topography and perhaps forests which looked forbidding to the early European invaders of the area. Rivers in Queensland and Tasmania got this name also.

Ebor and Styx

Ebor has a less frightful origin, being the abbreviation of the Roman name for British city which became York. Presumably a dominant early settler had Yorkshire connections. (It is, though, once again a name given to an existing feature by an invader.)

The Styx River actually is quite close to Dorrigo and Megan, where the Backhouse, Roebuck company operated the sawmills that we have just looked at. It’s 55 Km SSW of Dorrigo, to be more precise, or 65 Km from Megan, as the local birds fly.

It is only 24 Km SW of Ebor, but 60 Km by a winding road on which, even now, a trip between the two would take one hour.

The yellow line between the Bellingen and Nambucca Heads names in the vibrant pink square marks the course of the Styx River; Ebor is the yellow dot above the second L in Bellingen

Source:  Bonzle

4 Men from the First Transport

Our interest in both Ebor and the Styx River stems from a company called Ebor Saw Mills Pty Ltd supposedly operating at the Styx River. Four men from the Heintzelman were sent there by the Commonwealth Employment Service from the Bonegilla camp on 19 January 1948.

In addition to Rapolas, they were a sole Latvian, Janis Boza, and two other Lithuanians, Zigitas Brokevičius and Algirdas Kiaupa. As we keep having to say in this blog, at least the Latvian probably could communicate with the others in basic German, plus whatever English the four had been able to learn in the previous 2-3 months.

We now know that Zigitas or Sigitas Brokevičius was the half-brother or step-brother of Vincentas Jakimavičius, who travelled with him on the Heintzelman and was killed in a motorcycle accident in South Australia on 24 July 1949.

Ebor Sawmills' history

Ebor Sawmills Pty Ltd came into existence in May 1945, having previously been HE Cooper Pty Ltd. HE Cooper was very likely to have been Harold Edward Cooper of Glenferneigh, as recorded on the 1939 joint electoral roll for the Commonwealth electorate of Cowper and the state one of Raleigh. His occupation was sawmiller. (The electoral roll can be found behind the Ancestry.com paywall.)

The Sydney Sun newspaper published the registration of HE Cooper Pty Ltd on 1 October 1942. It had a capital of £5,000, with 4 directors, of whom HE Cooper was the first to be named.

Ebor Sawmills' History of Accidents

HE Cooper owned a sawmill at Glenferneigh in 1934, when one of the employees had his stomach pierced by an iron rod he had used in an attempt to take a belt off a moving flywheel. The employee died at the Dorrigo Private Hospital one week after the accident and a coronial inquiry was held.

The Coroner concluded that “No blame in connection with the accident was attachable to anyone in respect of their actions or in respect of the safe and proper working of the mill premises.”

Glenferneigh or Glen Fernaigh is about two-thirds of the way along the minor road between Hernani and Tyringham; Ebor and Dorrigo are more prominent in the lower portion of this map with the B78 highway running between Ebor near the left edge and Dorrigo near the right

Source:  Apple Maps

A place called Glenferneigh does not appear on most modern maps, although they still note a Glen Fernaigh River which rises 13 Km NE of Ebor. Phillip Simpson’s Historical Guide to New South Wales says that Glen Fernaigh was 25 Km northwest of Dorrigo, it had its own school between 1940 and 1967, the telephone service was connected in 1922, and the populations were 59 in 1933 and 53 in 1954.

A 25-year-old man died after having his leg cut off and his right arm partially cut off at the Point Lookout sawmill owned by Ebor Sawmills on 22 August 1945. If he had been able to release his grip on a control lever, he would not have been caught between the end of a log and the saw.  (See map below for Point Lookout.)

The manager of that particular sawmill undertook, at a Coroner’s inquest the following month, to move the control lever further from the saw so that the risk of further accidents was reduced.

In October 1947, Sydney’s Daily Mirror included Ebor Sawmills Pty Ltd in a list of companies whose capitalisation had been increased. In its case, the investment in the company had grown from £5,000 to £20,000 through the issue of an additional 15,000 £1 shares. Someone must have thought that it was worth investing in this business, despite the risks to its employees.

A foreman working for Ebor Sawmills but at a Guy Fawkes sawmill had his right arm torn off in April 1953. It had been caught between a belt and a pulley. While there is a Guy Fawkes River and a Guy Fawkes River National Park near Ebor, it seems that a village or settlement called Guy Fawkes is another which no longer exists.

The name had been incorporated into that of the local newspaper, the Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate, which closed down in 2023, so the place may have been large enough once to support the Guy Fawkes Advocate on its own.

Apple Maps positions Guy Fawkes at the intersection of a faint road (Guyra Road) heading NW
from the main road through the area (Grafton Road, or Waterfall Way on Google Maps);
Google Maps has a Snowy Range Rest Area at that intersection now; note Ebor to the NNW of Guy Fawkes and the location of another sawmill, Point Lookout, to its SE; Rigney Creek is the faintly visible water course flowing just north of Guy Fawkes

Source:  Apple Maps

Phillip Simpson says the Guy Fawkes was 38 Km west of Dorrigo, established around 1884 but largely abandoned by 1909. Nonetheless, its population of 297 in 1901 was still 130 in 1911 and 61 in 1933. It had its own post office between 1895 and 1911, a public school built in 1895 but closed in 1944 and then removed, and as we now know from the nasty accident above, a sawmill.  

There are not many photographs of work inside a sawmill —
perhaps places where photographers did not wish to go —
but we can see the danger in this one showing two circular saws rotating in a Lorne, Victoria, mill

Source:  Lorne Historical Society

Did Ebor Sawmills have a Styx River Mill?

We’ve seen from newspaper reports of fatal accidents in the Ebor company’s sawmills that it owned them at places called Glenferneigh or Glen Fernaigh, Point Lookout and Guy Fawkes, but did it have one at a place called Styx River?

There certainly are Styx Rivers (both Little and Big) near Ebor.  A Trove search of digitised newspapers from the area and Sydney for both Ebor Sawmills in the same item as Styx River produces only two reports, both from February 1954.  Then, heavy rainfall washed fingerling trout out of a hatchery and into a river which fed into the Big Styx (as did the Little Styx). In those reports, a sawmill at Ebor gets mention. We reasonably could expect it to belong to the Ebor Sawmills company as well.

There was a Styx River sawmill as well as a Styx River Sawmill Company separate from the Ebor Sawmills company. The Styx River sawmill appeared in the Armidale (NSW) Chronicle initially many times during 1927 because it was advertising timber. Specifically, the advertisements said that a partnership called TF Mills & Son, of Armidale, had taken over this sawmill.  

In 1940, the 21-year-old son of the mill's manager had both bones of his lower right arm broken and the arm so badly torn that it was amputated that day.  He had switched off a motor he was driving and was climbing down from the seat when he slipped, and had put out both arms as we do if losing our balance.  One arm had been caught between a belt and still revolving pulley.

In August 1948, the reader met Mrs E Mulcahy of North Queensland who was visiting her daughter at Jeogla. One reason for the visit is that Mrs Mulcahy’s son-in-law was still in the Armidale Hospital after an accident at the Styx River Sawmill 3 weeks previously.

In 1939, a tree feller working on his own in the Styx River State Forest found his leg pinned by a tree knocked over by another falling tree. He wriggled the broken leg free, improvised splints from an old pair of gumboots, tied the splints to the leg with his belt and boot laces, then used crutches cut from two saplings to work his way across gullies and vines towards the Styx River sawmill. His cries were heard 3 hours after he set out.

An anonymous contributor to the Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser in December 1944 wrote a piece which described the excellent work of staff of the Styx River Timber Company working in the Styx River Sawmill at Jeogla, some 40 miles (64 Km) from Armidale. Under a Strikes Unknown headline, he named and described at least 13 staff from the Manager to the “leviation (sic) contractor and his gang of Bashers and Bills”. The “gang of Bashers and Bills” presumably included additional, unnamed workers.

Jeogla is highlighted in the lower left of this map, with Ebor just left of centre and Dorrigo to the right, a little north of Ebor's latitude; since Point Lookout is a local tourist feature, it gets a highlight  too, also left of centre and south of Ebor; the Styx River rises on the western side of Point Lookout and flows southeast, to the east of Jeogla

Source:  Apple Maps

This praise now serves the purpose of advising the reader that the Styx River Sawmill, Jeogla, now was owned by the Styx River Timber Company, Armidale, not Ebor Sawmills.

I conclude that CES staff were more accurate in recording that the 4 men from the Heintzelman were sent to Ebor Sawmills, the company, than to the Styx River. After all, in a recent entry to this blog, we noted that they had men going to Kiewa when they actually were going to Bogong to work on the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme.

What happened later

It’s not a surprise that one of 4 men returned to the Bonegilla camp around one year later, looking for a change of employment. Algirdas Kiaupa returned on 4 February 1949. On 28 March, so more than 7 weeks later, the CES sent him to work for the New South Wales Railways at Bogan Gate, a village in central NSW, 337 aerial Km WNW of Sydney. Let us hope that at least one other man, preferably a friend, and likely to be from a later Transport, was sent with him for company.

Given the fatal accidents before and after the men started with Ebor Sawmills, the surprise is that the other 3 men seem to have stayed.

In 1975, the NSW Government Gazette included Ebor Sawmills in a list of companies no longer registered and now dissolved. The company possibly had sawn all the good trees it could find, apart from those now protected in nature reserves or state and national parks.

SOURCES

Armidale Chronicle (1927) 'Advertising', Armidale, NSW, 3 August, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article188074016, accessed 24 October 2025.

Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser (1940) 'Amputation Necessary', 16 February, p 4 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article193902735, accessed 27 October 2025.

Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser (1945) 'Heard Man Scream', Armidale, NSW, 12 September, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article194312479, accessed 21 October 2025.

Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser (1954) 'Flood Washes 30,000 Fingerling Trout from Hatchery in Big Styx' Armidale,NSW, 24 February, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article194338752, accessed 27 October 2025.

Daily Examiner (1934) 'Sawmill Fatality', Grafton, NSW, 19 December, p 7 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article193153079, accessed 20 October 2025.

Daily Mirror (1945) 'New Companies', Sydney, 24 May, p 19 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article272469613, accessed 19 October 2025.

Daily Mirror (1947) 'Increase of Cap.' Sydney, NSW, 2 October, p 23,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article273330050, accessed 27 October 2025.

Daily Telegraph (1939) 'Crutches of Gum Saplings', Sydney, NSW, 28 July, p 2 , http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article247772956, accessed 24 October 2025.

Daily Telegraph (1945) 'Company Registrations', Sydney, 26 May, p 21 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248007015, accessed 21 October 2025.

Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales (1975) 'Companies Act, 1961 (Section 308 (4))', Sydney, 28 November, p 4983, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article220171963, accessed 21 October 2025.

Guyra Argus (1954) 'Flood Washes 30,000 Fingerling Trout from Hatchery in Big Styx', Guyra, NSW, 25 February, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173249608, accessed 27 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate(1945) ‘Ebor Fatality’ Dorrigo, NSW, August 31, p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173131221, accessed 21 October 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; KIAUPA ALGIRDAS, KIAUPA, Algirdas : Year of Birth - 1926 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 532, 1947-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203635089, accessed 24 October 2025.

Sun (1942) 'Company Registration', Sydney, 1 October, p 9 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article230594103, accessed 20 October 2025.

Simpson, Phillip (2019) Historical Guide to New South Wales, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne.

Sydney Morning Herald (1945) 'Change Of Name', NSW, 12 June, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27937026, accessed 19 October 2025.