Beautiful work; beautiful, beautiful work. We were always millers; four brothers.

Melville Mill

The equipment wasn’t very much when we took over the mill [in Melville]. There was just the saw and the shingling machine. We were there a year and a half before we bought a new planer. In the meantime we were still running the mill. It was the only mill then, you see. They hauled the lumber from Flat River and everywhere up there to get sawed.

It was a wonderful thing. If anybody wanted any help my father’d close the mill down and away we’d go. John Alex Ross in Surrey lost his home and we had a very heavy woods over across the road and a bunch of men come and they cut all the lumber and they hauled it down to the mill. We sawed it and loaded it on two cars at Melville Station and shipped it to Surrey Station and went up and hauled it from there to where the house was. And that was it. No charge on the train or anything for hauling it up to Surrey.... And my father went up to build the house with them.

The Murray Harbour fellas, they used to come down on the train, see? And then they’d go to the woods. And you know the stem and the stern for

Courtesy Mary Ross

Melville Station, 6.1955. 72 BELFAST PEOPLE