Western Australia stopped logging its native forests on 1 January 2024. People ask me, reasonably, how we are still selling Jarrah.
The answer is that our Jarrah never came from those forests. It comes from trees that were being cleared anyway, on private land the ban never covered, and we can only buy it once or twice a year.
Across the south-west there are farmers clearing fence lines to make them safe against fire. Opening paddocks for grazing, or a dam, or avocados. Cleaning up paddock trees that came over in a storm. This is very common practice for south-west farmers and it has nothing to do with the timber industry.
There is also clearing ahead of approved mining — bauxite and rare-earth operations in the south-west.
A lot of these logs were historically pushed up and burnt, or sent to the chip. The greater majority were simply wasted. We are grateful to be able to salvage them and make something beautiful out of them.
The difference between Jarrah and Marri is frequency. Marri we can source fairly regularly. Jarrah opportunities are very, very rare, and usually only come up once or twice a year. That is the whole reason Jarrah takes patience to buy.
Western Australia regulates this more tightly than most people assume, and more tightly than the eastern states regulate the equivalent.
In New South Wales, where our Blackbutt and Spotted Gum come from, private native forestry runs under a published code with a legal minimum of basal area left standing and regeneration checked at two, six and ten years. We wrote about that in the farmers behind our Blackbutt and Spotted Gum.
This state has no equivalent code. It does something different and arguably harder: it assesses every site on its own.
Under the Environmental Protection Act 1986, felling a native tree here is legally clearing. There is no exemption for commercial timber on private land, so a harvest needs a native vegetation clearing permit assessed by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation against statutory clearing principles, with conditions written for that particular site.
Cutting lawfully is only half of it. Selling native timber taken from private property needs a private land supplier's licence from the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, and it is only granted where the taking was lawful. Licence holders file a return every three months.
Both documents are held by the farmer, not by us. Farmers are conservative, unobtrusive people and they generally will not have their properties identified, which is why you will not see permit numbers published on this page. What I can tell you is that logs cannot legally be cleared, felled or sold in this state without them, a logging contractor cannot ship to us before the farmer holds them, and the fines and legal consequences for taking a single tree without one are large enough that nobody here is willing to take the risk. Every consignment is inspected by a government official in Perth before it ships.
This is the question I most want to answer properly, because it is the one a Perth buyer should ask.
Marri and Jarrah matter to three black cockatoo species that live in the south-west, all of them listed as threatened. They feed in these trees and they nest in the hollows of the old ones.
There are several black cockatoo consultants who south-west farmers call on to complete a clearing application. I know some of them. One is John Clarke, a forester who now works independently carrying out black cockatoo surveys and assessments. He assesses with independence and authority, and he tells farmers which trees can come down and which have to stay.
That work is public record. Habitat assessments are lodged as supporting information with clearing permit applications and published by the department. They map breeding habitat — native eucalypts, typically half a metre or more in diameter, checked for hollows of the right size and height — along with roosting trees and foraging habitat, across all three species. The assessment goes in with the application, and the retention obligations come back through the permit conditions.
I am not going to tell you that clearing a paddock leaves the bush untouched. It doesn't. What I can tell you is that the habitat is independently surveyed and assessed before anything is approved, that hollow-bearing trees are identified and protected through that process, and that the person doing the assessing has no stake in the outcome.
This part is ours rather than the regulator's, and it is the part I would defend hardest.
We used to run our own mill at Donnybrook, in the south-west, processing Jarrah and Marri. So I know what is inside these logs. Jarrah heartwood is volatile — it splits, it checks. The logs often carry rot, termite damage and insect holes. And Jarrah has white sapwood.
Sapwood is the ring of living cells on the outside of a log. The heartwood inside is the red-to-pink timber people actually want. In Jarrah the sapwood is white, so the contrast is extreme. It drives colour variation through the boards, and it cuts the recovery of red timber specifically — not just timber generally. That is a distinction almost nobody makes: Jarrah's recovery problem is not only how much of the log is usable, it is how much of the log is the right colour.
Conventional milling of a Jarrah log for premium-grade flooring recovers somewhere around 30 to 35 per cent. We recover 65 to 70 per cent of the same log, and we lose a further decent percentage in drying because of that unstable heartwood.
The reason we can do it is Stabilised Solid®. The short timber, the blemished timber, the cracks, the narrow boards, the sapwood — all of it gets used to build up the three-layer structure. The very things that ruin a conventional Jarrah board are what become the structure of ours.
In the factory, the offcuts and sawdust fuel the boiler that heats our kiln dry room. That is not a marketing line, it is just what happens to the parts of the log that don't become a floor.
I would rather say this plainly than have you find it in a spec sheet.
Because Jarrah is so scarce, we often don't have enough material to make the middle layer out of Jarrah. So we find a strong hardwood alternative, often an Australian one. Sometimes we have surplus Blackbutt middle layer from another floor and it goes into the middle of a Jarrah board. Product utilisation is at the core of how we think about sustainability, and that is a good outcome, not a compromise.
What it changes for you: nothing. The core we choose is always a hardwood, always of matching or better stability. The warranty is the same lifetime warranty. The sanding life is the same, because the wearing surface is always the same 5mm of Jarrah. The sound underfoot is the same. The durability and stability are the same. We are scientists of this process and we do not compromise on the performance of our floorboards.
Which is why our boards are three layers of 100 per cent hardwood from top to bottom, and why we say it that way rather than the way most of this industry does. There is no plywood in them, no pine, no rubberwood.
The price guide has current Jarrah pricing, boards only, GST included.
Most flooring suppliers answer the sourcing question with an adjective. "Sustainably sourced" with no number and no document behind it is not an answer, it is a hope.
So ask. Ask where the log came from, who assessed the habitat, and what the permit required. If a supplier can't tell you, that is information too.
Come and see the timber at our Osborne Park showroom, where Jarrah sits beside everything else we sell. And if you want the background on what the 2024 ban did and didn't change, it is in can you still buy Jarrah flooring in WA.
From private land in the south-west of Western Australia. The logs are salvaged from farm clearing — fence lines made safe against fire, paddocks opened for grazing, dams or avocados, and paddock trees blown over in storms — and from clearing ahead of approved mining operations. Historically most of those logs were burnt or chipped. We can buy them once or twice a year.
Yes, and it is tightly controlled. Felling a native tree in Western Australia is legally clearing under the Environmental Protection Act 1986, so a commercial harvest needs a clearing permit from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation. Selling that timber needs a private land supplier's licence from the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, granted only where the taking was lawful. The farmer holds both, a contractor cannot ship without them, and every consignment is government-inspected in Perth before it leaves.
Black cockatoo habitat is independently surveyed and assessed before a clearing permit is granted. Consultants map breeding habitat — native eucalypts, typically half a metre or more in diameter, checked for hollows of the right size and height — along with roosting and foraging habitat, across all three threatened species. The assessment is lodged with the permit application and hollow-bearing trees are identified and protected through the permit conditions. Clearing a paddock does remove habitat; what the process ensures is that the habitat is assessed independently first.
Not always. Because Jarrah is so scarce we often do not have enough material for the middle layer, so we use another strong hardwood, frequently an Australian one and sometimes surplus Blackbutt from another floor. The core is always a hardwood of matching or better stability. The wearing surface is always the same 5mm of Jarrah, so the warranty, the sanding life, the sound underfoot and the stability are unchanged.