This is considered one of the best timber trees in Australia for building purposes. The wood does not differ much from that of either the blue or white gum trees, except in being somewhat cleaner and straighter in the grain. The colour is a pale brown. It is said to make excellent flooring boards. This wood, like most of the others of the same genus, becomes more difficult to work after it dries; therefore it is usual not only to cut the wood into scantlings, flooring boards, etc, but also to plane it up, as far as practicable, while green It shrinks considerably in drying.

Mr. Atwool states that while he was in New South Wales it was the custom to extemporize a sawpit where the tree fell, and there and then to cut it up into boards and scantlings.

This saved labour in transport, as only the best part of the timber was worth the cost of removal, and besides, it would have been very difficult to remove trees of such a size until they had been cut up.

The part of the tree which produces the best timber is the outside; the inside, or heart, of most of the gum-trees being often hollow and decayed. The weight of a cubic foot when dry is about 54 lbs. The crushing force is about the same as that of the blue gum, but the transverse strength is very much less.