 The primary traffic was sawn timber and firewood, with many sawmills located adjacent to the railway.Farming families toiled to clear the huge trees and sow pasture.Many had given up by the 1920s and 1930s because of wet weather, weeds, rabbits, scrub regrowth, difficult access to markets, impacts of the Great Depression and repeated and destructive bushfires in 1886, 1919, 1932 and finally Black Friday in 1939.