Hundreds of workers, families, residents and supporters of the beleaguered Heyfield timber mill have marched through Melbourne vowing to fight to stop their home turning into a Victorian ghost town.
The protesters rallied at Parliament House on Tuesday alongside dozens of log trucks voicing their opposition to the planned closure of the Gippsland mill.
Australian Sustainable Hardwood (ASH) last week rejected the state government's reduced timber supply offer and said it will close the mill in 2018.
Protester Janet Komen, whose husband has worked at the mill for 15 years, says Heyfield will become a ghost town if the mill closes in September next year.
"People will stop coming to it, they won't come. Shops will shut. People will have to go to other places to look for work," she told AAP on Tuesday.
Darren Synnott, who has worked at the mill for seven years, told AAP he would have to move his family to Sale or Traralgon if the mill closed, saying as a father with a mortgage he's fearful of unemployment.
Premier Daniel Andrews offered to buy the mill if the owners didn't accept the government's timber supply offer of 80,000 cubic metres in the first year and 60,000 cubic metres in the two years after that.
But ASH says it needs at least 130,000 cubic metres a year to keep the mill afloat and its 250 workers employed.
CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor told reporters a government-owned mill with reduced capacity was not the answer.
"Half the jobs will go, and that's not acceptable," he said.
"We have an owner of the mill...what we're looking for is sawlogs."
CFMEU Victorian secretary John Setka told the crowd it was a joke that timber supply would be compromised because of concerns about a critically endangered possum, which is one stage away from extinction, and its forest population numbers.
But Trent Patten from Wildlife of the Central Highlands told AAP it's disgraceful that environmental concerns and native forest destruction were still treated as a "joke".
The CFMEU said the mill's closure would create a domino effect, forcing companies to seek overseas supplies.
Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters he hoped ASH would talk to the government to seek a solution and save the jobs.
He also dismissed suggestions the mill should move to Tasmania.
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