John La Gerche

John La Gerche was a pioneering forester on the Victorian goldfields at Creswick, Australia in the late 19th-century.

Early life John La Gerche was born on 22 May 1845 on the island of Jersey as the only son of Jean La Gerche and Marguerite La Mottee. His surname is a remnant of the island's Norman heritage, and he would have spoken fluent French as well as English. The La Gerche family were not only prominent farmers on the island, but his father was the local constable and lieutenant of the local militia.

John grew up on a 14-acre farm which had been owned by the family since 1670. Between 1857 and 1862 he attended Victoria College for boys and excelled at his studies, winning prizes for proficiency in languages, (English, French and German), as well as mathematics.

He emigrated to Victoria on the Agra from London as an “unassisted cabin passenger”, and arrived in Hobsons Bay near Melbourne on 30 March 1865. He listed his occupation on the manifest as "gentleman", and it is likely he had come to take up land as a new settler rather than as a gold miner.

However, the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s combined with widespread and indiscriminate land clearing for mining, agriculture and settlement became one of the major causes of forest loss and degradation. Over the next three decades, the forests were denuded in the wasteful scramble to produce timbers for mining operations, such as poppet legs, props, laths, sawn timber and firewood for boilers. The forests were being rapidly and recklessly cleared in ever-widening circles around the goldfields.

Forest management, government regulation and enforcement during this period was chaotic. Ironically it was the timber needs of the mining industry, on which much of the colony's wealth was founded, that led the Government to finally act and set aside forest reservess. So in 1862, the assistant commissioner of Crown Lands, Clement Hodgkinson, withheld some 35,000 acres near the goldfields. The forests around Creswick were reserved later in 1866. However, Vincent's withering report in 1887 proved a watershed moment and John La Gerche's responsibilities shifted more to managing forests and plantations and less towards enforcement as a bailiff.

In 1889 about 100,000 seedlings raised at sawpit gully nursery we moved to the abandoned New Australia Mine site just north of Creswick.

The forester in charge of the Ballarat Water Commission, Christopher Mudd, also supported La Gerche by exchanging seeds, plants and ideas. He underscored "State forest conservancy and management are in an extraordinary backward state". Ribbentrop's report prompted yet another Royal Commission which commenced in 1897 and produced 14 separate reports before closing in 1901.

By 1897, the year of his departure from Creswick, nearly three-quarters of the forest had been thinned, much of it fenced and many plantations established. Mining was in decline and pilfering had practically ceased. The number of cattle in the forest had greatly diminished and their owners departed. While La Gerche had personally planted over 100,000 seedlings. The State Forest Department was finally created in 1908 and La Gerche was appointed one of its founding Inspectors along with W J Code, and J Firth.

The Sawpit Gully area, including the nursery site and plantation, was granted heritage status in 2015.