wages to climb up and get the jumper down. No one ever did; so it just rotted away. But over time the Pattinson Tree came to represent a totem in the local community and its remnants can still be found on the Grand Ridge Road. In addition to the discovery of gold at Walhalla in 1862, agriculture and forestry, the mining of large coal deposits in the LaTrobe Valley, at Wonthaggi as well as Gelliondale near Yarram from the 1920s strongly influenced the pattern of later settlement across Gippsland. The Heartbreak Hills By 1887 the Minister for Lands, Mr John Lamont Dow, expressed regret that "the magnificent blue gum ridges throughout south Gippsland have been alienated from the Crown … every acre of this land has passed into the hands of private selectors." But high rainfall, steep hills, the lack of an adequate road system and long distances to markets ultimately caused farming to fail in many of these areas, particularly in the eastern Ranges. In winter, the roads degenerated and became boggy channels of mud. Corduroy tracks were built with small logs laid cross ways along the worst stretches. The hill farmers believed that Government investment in a major roads program would be their salvation. The Grand Ridge Road was built by the Country Roads Board in the 1920s joining all the local north-south roads in one long east-west strip but proved little practical use. However, the road was progressively improved in unemployment relief works during the Great Depression of the 1930s and promoted as a tourist drive. The other hope was the timber industry but Melbourne's timber was being adequately supplied from the Central Highlands until the mid-1950s. Often in the higher rainfall areas, once the forest had been removed, large chunks of the hillsides began to move and slump down the steep slopes, causing deep erosion scars that sometimes blocked streams and roads with tonnes of saturated topsoil and sticky clay. Bushfires also swept through the eastern Strzeleckis, the worst being on Red Tuesday 1898 when 50 homesteads were destroyed. The fires are dramatically illustrated by the paintings "The homestead saved" by James Alfred Turner and "Gippsland, Sunday Night, February 20, 1898" by John Campbell Longstaff. Other bushfires followed between 1899 and 1944, but the Ranges largely escaped the Black Friday bushfires of 1939. As the understanding grew among people that the clearing of the eastern Strzeleckis