We produce beautiful, long lasting products from agroforestry, plantation and salvaged trees.
Specialists in Architectural and custom timber products
Working with our clients to bring their projects to life with the beauty and strength of Australian timber.
Amber Creek Sawmill is a small family owned business located near Fish Creek in South Gippsland. We source logs from across Victoria and process them into the highest and best use products we can get from each and every log. We sell to builders, architects, carpenters, landscapers and the general public.
Our Work
Specialty Timber Framing
Phillip Island Winery
We design and manufacture exposed structural elements for a wide range of buildings.
Decking
Durable species in a range of widths and thicknesses.
Timber Cladding
Cape Woolamai house
External shiplap cladding in a range of profiles and species that suits any design.
Structural Timber
Photo by Everyday Niki
IS Architecture, Mt Best house.
Dried and dressed as well as rough sawn unseasoned.
Bespoke Products
External beam benches
Made to order
Landscaping products
Durable poles, steppers, tree and garden stakes, fence timbers.
Timber Species
These are the main species we stock.
Southern Bluegum
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Southern Bluegum, Eucalyptus globulus, is a large tree that grows in Victoria and Tasmania. Its timber is dense (970kgm3) and very strong (up to F34).
It is class 2 above ground durability and BAL rated for 12.5 and 19. -
We produce shiplap cladding, internal lining boards, battens and screening boards, structural timber (F27 ) from Southern Bluegum.
Silvertop Ash
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Silvertop Ash, Eucalyptus sieberi, is a large Eucalypt that grows in South eastern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.
Its timber is class 2 above ground durability, 850kg/m3 density and up to F27 structural rating.
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Silvertop is a versatile species, we produce external cladding, lining boards, flooring and structural products from this species.
Macrocarpa Cypress
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Macrocarpa Cypress, Cupressus macrocarpa, is originally from the Monterey peninsula in California. they were brought to Australia as windbreak trees and planted widely in the early to mid 1900s. These trees are harvested at the end of their lives and make very useful timber. It performs well outdoors (not officially tested by the CSIRO but performs to class 2 above ground standard), is very stable and easy to work. Dry density is around 500kg/cubic metre, structural rating F7 Bal rating 12.5
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Cypress is very versatile, we produce external cladding, internal lining boards, tongue and groove flooring, structural timber, dressed all round, weatherboards, battens and screening boards from this species.
Sugar Gum
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Sugar Gum, Eucalyptus cladocalyx, is originally from South Australia but has been extensively planted in Western Victoria in farm plantations and windbreaks. It is a very dense (1100kgm3) timber and also very durable (class 1 in and above ground) it is reasonably strong (F27) and meets BAL 12.5 and 19 requirements.
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Sugar gum is excellent for decking, external posts and beams, poles and posts.
Messmate
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Messmate, Eucalyptus obliqua, is a large tree that grows throughout Tasmania, Victoria as well as parts of NSW and Queensland. The timber is moderate density (750kg/m3), structurally strong (F27) but not very durable (class 3 above ground). It is an excellent timber for joinery, furniture, flooring, exposed framing.
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We produce dressed all round boards, rough sawn seasoned and tongue and groove flooring from Messmate.
Turpentine
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Turpentine, Syncarpia glomulifera, is a large tree that grows along the East coast from Central NSW to Northern Queensland. The wood is very dense (950kgm3) and durable (class 1 above ground). It is strong (F27) and has the highest BAL rating of 29. Our supply is from salvaged jetty piles.
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Turpentines high durability and toughness make it an excellent decking timber.
Projects
Stony Creek house
The renovated farmhouse uses mixed width feature grade Southern Bluegum shiplap cladding, cypress decking and structural verandah posts and frame, Southern Bluegum battens.
Gurneys Cider
Amber Creek has been fortunate to have a long involvement with the Gurneys Cider crew near Foster on their unique cellar door enterprise. Initially we provided a heavy Bluegum frame for the cellar door building, as well as cypress cladding, Scotts pine ceiling lining boards and cypress facia. Since then we have worked on several other projects.
Underground cellar; providing the massive doors and frames at each end of the tunnel. Silvertop ash door frames, Southern Bluegum doors.
Entrance wall; sugar gum posts and beams support colorbond panels to protect the cellar door courtyard from the westerly wind.
Entrance porch to the cellar door building; Cypress heavy timber frame.
Phillip Island Winery
Amber Creek was commissioned to provide a heavy timber frame for a covered atrium for Phillip Island Winery cellar door. Working with designer Karl Russo, we designed and constructed a frame that connected with the existing building. The frame is constructed from plantation grown Mountain Ash and Macrocarpa Cypress.
Our log supply.
Amber Creek Sawmill buys logs from a range of sources. We are well accustomed to a lumpy, uncertain and diverse supply stream. We can handle batches in any size from single logs up to hundreds of tons. Agroforestry trees are purposefully grown as sawlogs in plots on farms. Salvaged logs can be from cypress windrows coming to the end of their life, storm damaged trees and trees being removed from construction or fire break clearing.
We also procure rough sawn unseasoned timber from other mills that source logs from sustainable sources.
We offer full transparency on the provenance of our timber.
Logs from many of these sources have often been under valued and put to low value uses, chipped or simply left to decay. Amber Creek Sawmill aims to find and process these logs into the highest and best use we can get from them.
We can arrange harvest and haulage of small agroforestry plots that may be too small to be viable for larger mills.
Amber Creek sawmill aims to provide a long term stable and high value market for Agroforestry growers. The care and effort we put into processing agroforestry logs into the highest value use reflects the time and effort the growers have put into their trees.
One of the factors that has held back the development of widespread, well managed agroforestry in Victoria is a lack of scale appropriate processors willing to process and market agroforestry grown logs and timber as high value products. It is our goal to do something about this.
Custom Timber Processing
Amber Creek specialise in one off small batch runs of custom milling and dressing timber profiles to make your project unique.
Services include:
Sawmilling and breakdown of raw logs to usable products
Resawing large section sawn timber into smaller dimensions.
Air and kiln drying.
Machining and dressing of rough sawn timber into profiles including decking, dressed all round, cladding and lining boards.
Grading, docking and packing.
AMBER CREEK PROCESSING
Selective Milling
Selective Milling refers to our production process which ensures that every part of a sawlog is cut to its highest and best use.
Our mill is designed to be able to selectively cut the log into desirable pieces and remove defective pieces, allowing us to recover great timber from sometimes pretty average logs. The logs are first broken down with a swingblade mill, into large sections called flitches, and waste sections. The flitches are resawn into boards with the bandsaw which is very accurate and has a narrow blade so there is less wasted into sawdust. The waste sections are processed into firewood or woodchips.
After the bandsaw the timber is graded and racked out for air drying, then machining into final products.
About Amber Creek
Dan Bright grew up on a dairy farm in Fish Creek, forming a strong connection with the local landscape, particularly the wild places left uncleared and still full of old trees. Dan dreamed of having his own piece of that landscape but was not inclined towards dairy farming.
So he wandered a circuitous path towards the goal, leaving school early to do a diesel mechanic apprenticeship, then travelling for 2 years through South and East Africa, living and working in Guernsey for a couple of years, then coming back to Australia to work in the mining industry which allowed him to save up enough to buy the farm next door to the one he grew up on. It was an undeveloped block with heaps of bush and 3 creeks running through it, no buildings or internal fencing, not even a driveway. A blank canvas.
Dan started making it habitable and accessible. He needed timber for the buildings so he bought a portable mill to cut fallen trees into timber with. He found the sawmilling to be interesting and enjoyable work and set about learning as much as he could about it. Soon other landowners were asking Dan to mill logs for them on their properties and Amber Creek Sawmilling was created.
In the 15 years since he has continued to improve his skills, expanded the range of services and products the business offers, trained quite a few employees and installed a lot of equipment to keep up with the increased demand as well as planting thousands of trees on the property he lives and works on.