Early timber harvesting commenced in the 1860s by Hugh Mahony who cut and hauled cedar logs to mills in Ipswich.

Francis expanded the operations at Tygum to include sawmilling, an industry that would dominate the working lives of the next generation of the Lahey family.

[2][3] During the same year David, John, Isaiah, Thomas and Evangeline Lahey all applied for and were granted selections of land around Canungra totalling over 3,000 acres (1,200 ha).

[1] The Lahey family was hard working, innovative, and often experimental, eager for change and mindful of market forces and demands.

By this time the Lahey's had acquired timber leases amounting to over 16,000 acres (6,500 ha) in the Canungra and Pine Creek Valleys, thereby requiring the slow and expensive bullock teams to haul logs over ever-increasing distances.

The Lahey's viewed mechanisation as the solution to their transportation problems and it was decided a tramway be built into the Pine Creek Valley.

The tramway servicing the mill was extended over time and by 1910 the main line was 13.5 kilometres (8.4 mi) long with a branch 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) up Flying Fox Creek and a sub-branch 500 metres (1,600 ft) up Little Flying Fox Creek to service a new aerial ropeway on Beech Mountain.

The Lahey's were interested in purchasing new milling machinery and keen to stay abreast of the latest trends in sawmilling practice.

The mill, however, closed three months later due to a change in policy by the Commission for their acquisitions of timber[2] and was put up for sale.

The abandoned caravan park and remaining wire and star-picket fence lines are not considered to be of cultural heritage significance.

A number of broken bricks were recorded on the surface, including those from Campbell's Brickworks, Brisbane or Redbank, as well as other elliptical frogged but unlettered types possibly used as insulation for the two boilers known to have been on site.

These foundations are located immediately adjacent to the remains of the former Lahey's railway siding and are interpreted as part of the infrastructure used to load timber onto trains heading from the mill on the government Canungra-Logan Village branch line and also possibly related to the later Standply Timber Company veneer and plywood operations.

[1] Lahey's Canungra Sawmill Site is important in demonstrating part of the pattern of Queensland's history as remnant evidence of an early, substantial and enduring timber processing operation between 1884 and 1921, and again from 1933 until c.1935.

[1] Archaeological investigations of the Lahey's Canungra Sawmill have potential to reveal important aspects of Queensland's history, including early and long enduring timber processing practices, influences on the development of Queensland by the prominent Lahey family in its history, and the daily lives and conditions faced by workers in late 19th and early 20th century timber industry.

[1] The Lahey's Canungra Sawmill provides an opportunity to examine, through its archaeological remains, an important early and long enduring timber processing operation.

Although timber processing operations were widespread across Queensland by the late 19th century, archaeological investigations into the mill layout and composition have potential to yield additional information on the changing and often innovative workplace practices that occurred at the Canungra Sawmill.

[1] Archaeological investigations at Lahey's Canungra Sawmill provide a rare opportunity to examine issues of continuity and change to milling operations in late 19th and early 20th century Queensland.

Analysis of subsurface archaeological deposits may provide new information on previously unknown or little documented timber manufacturing processes, particularly as the Lahey family were well known for embracing change and for innovative workplace practices.