IT WAS like a glimpse of the past and some visitors to the Bunya Mountains in the 1960s witnessed the closing of an era.

It was a working bullock team hauling pine logs from the dense rainforest as they had done in the early days.

The bullocky was a gaunt, ageing man who had reached his three score years and 10 but was well up to driving his team.

Fred Klein was taking part in the closing days of the timber getters' role in the colourful history of the Bunya Mountains.

He was a great grandson of a pioneer farmer of early Toowoomba, Martin Klein, but had started life on his father's selection at Evergreen.

Fred loved the bush life and when he left school his father yoked up 22 bullocks and trained him to bring in logs to the Goombungee sawmill.

In his late teens he had the opportunity to travel west with a teamster. Bullock teams were bringing in hardwood logs to a sleeper mill at Miles.

It was an unruly place at the weekend and Fred claimed it took seven police officers to keep the peace.

The Great War then took place and Fred married Lizzy Kuhnert, whom he had known for years, and they settled on a selection.

However as the war was ending and the timber industry was opening up again in the Bunya Mountains, he yoked up his team and headed there, leaving Lizzie and their baby on the farm.

After a time this was too quiet for her so she packed up and headed for the mountains too.

Fred found a shack near McKenzie's Sawmill and it was there she raised her family.

About this time the returned soldiers arrived to carve out, with pick and shovel, the first road up the mountain.

It was to be the Kleins' home for some years.

Then the sawmill closed so the Kleins moved back to their farm at Peranga. The prickly pear was still a problem but they were able to start a dairy.

However Fred was no farmer and preferred to go off and find work with his bullock team. Several times he returned to the Bunyas while Lizzie and the family milked the cows.

Fred sold his farm to his son Lionel and moved to Mt Binga near Cooyar where he continued to work with his team in the forestry.

It was in 1961 that Fred was asked to return to the Bunyas to haul some pine logs out of the timber reserve. Soon word spread that a bullock team was working there.

Many had not seen them hauling logs and visitors began stopping to photograph the historic occasion.

Fred Klein returned again to the Bunyas in the mid-1960s. However tractors were doing the heavy logs. His ageing team was down to four bullocks but still working. When Spanker slipped on a steep track and never recovered, it was the end of the team.

Fred returned to his farm to live out his remaining six or seven years.