The Yew Tree of St. Nicholas

The Yew Tree of St. Nicholas

ANZAC Day is 25^th April and as a tribute to the fallen and those who were impacted by World War One and Two this is my contribution.

Saint Nicholas (c. 270–343 AD) was a 4th-century Christian Bishop of Myra (in modern-day Turkey) renowned for his secret gift-giving generosity to the poor, protection of children, sailors and a number of others including thieves. There’s nothing more generous that giving up one’s life for country and the Yew tree of St. Nicolas Church stands guard near the graves of ninety three New Zealand Expeditionary Force soldiers of World War One. Yew trees symbolised immortality and rebirth, to the Druids and the belief has endured over millennia. This particular tree is reputed to be over 1000 years old, which means it goes back to before 1026, during the medieval warm period and it survived the ravages of the little ice age of 1330 – 1850, showing it’s hardiness.

The church was built in the fourth century on land that may have been consecrated much earlier; some say, built around the time of St. Nicholas’s death. Other accounts put it at somewhere in the eight century, but it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086; it matters not because the Yew tree was there... but let’s be curious how it got there. The church was on a hilltop, so it could be seen from a distance. Being consecrated ground, animals, both wild and domestic would not have been allowed to trample the earth, so a stone wall was erected. Yew trees were grown in churchyards, because all parts of the tree are toxic to browsing animals, so it either dissuaded them... or killed them.

However, birds can eat the shiny berry and disperse the seed... but a seed dropped in a churchyard, where cocksfoot grass grows, has limited chance of germination because the grass robs all the moisture from the soil. On the other hand, Yew tolerates dry conditions, so if a seed falls on the dry side of a stone wall, it would have a chance because only barley grass would grow there. Or could someone have dug up a seedling and planted it in the churchyard? That’s a possibility... a seedling a foot high could be dozen or so years old, and the planter could have had a reason. Although Yew trees were used as longbows, it’s unlikely that seed was collected and planted at that time. So hopefully it was a person who valued trees transplanted it... which is perhaps the romantic version.

Trees don’t have eyes, ears or feelings... well there is something about feelings because there are detectable responses to pest attack and browsing, which is interesting but irrelevant. Trees can be called sentinels, an apt title for the Yew tree of St. Nicholas and it’s cemetery, because it ‘looks’ over the area... in a way, stoic. So how did the ninety three Kiwi soldiers become interred in an English countryside cemetery?

The Number One, New Zealand General Hospital was transferred from Cairo to Brockenhurst in June of 1916, the main site being the Tile Barn. The Balmer Lawn Hotel was conscripted for the New Zealand General Hospital No.1 and closed after the war, being returned to a hotel under the same name. The location was chosen because there was good train access from the port of Southampton to Brockenhurst. The station was close to the hospital.

War always has a propaganda element, and post WWII, at secondary school, we were put through a cadet military programme where some were recruited into the army. I enjoyed the discipline, rifle drills and marching and was amazed how the company parades formed from the Regimental Sergeant Major marching out alone. In English class we had to recite The Soldier by Rupert Brooke, sometimes replacing England with ‘New Zealand’ for the sake of patriotism. Before movies were shown we stood up to a clip of the Queen and the British national anthem... in a way I suppose it was engineered patriotism... but what’s a country without patriotism?

 

 If I should die, think only this of me: 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 

That is for ever England. There shall be

 In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 

A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blessed by suns of home. 

 

Most of the ninety three came from the Western Front and there were a number among them who were seriously ill from the various diseased associated with nutrition, mud and rats. All were heroes! How soldiers could be encouraged to run into machine gun fire... and the not so often mentioned, shrapnel fire. These were artillery shells were loaded with lead pellets and had timers that caused the shell to burst open above on-coming soldiers... lead pellets about half an inch in diameter travelling at 200mph when the soldiers had only tin hats for protection. We found these shells in the forest as a result of WWI training exercises... terrible things! This is why it isn’t a difficult task to say a few words on ANZAC Day, and Armistice Day. 

 

But thinking about those ninety three. There were other heroes, those who supported and didn’t fight. The stretcher bearers, they had to make a call on the battlefield of the likelihood of survival, before carrying, sometimes under fire, the wounded to the Aid Post, and there another decision had to be made before the field ambulance took them to the port. The hospital ships faced danger in Channel channel because of mines and some submarines. Every patient had to be carried from the ship to the train and likewise to the hospital and of course the medical staff had an onerous task... some 20 000 soldiers were treated at NZGH No.!. To sustain the war effort Ancillaries played a massive part, not front-line, but theirs was a vital role.

 

 I remember watching Sputnik-dot pass across the sky while I was waiting for the man who was the movie projectionist for Sunnyside Mental Hospital. I went with him each week for two years to watch free movies. Sunnyside was a dismal place, a bit like Colditz, where a large proportion of the inmates were WWII war veterans who found life to be difficult. My viewing place was a balcony high above the dining room where the inmates sat., sometimes they reacted to what was shown. Those dormitories looked like unwelcome places... but I suppose the military-like discipline is what those veterans remembered.  

 

During my forestry training days, I was stationed at Hanmer Forest, and in the township was the Queen Mary Hospital, an alcoholic rehabilitation hospital. Some, when ‘cured’, were sent to work with us, to introduce them back into the workforce, and they lived in the forest single men’s camp with us. All were WWII veterans, and none that I knew were ‘cured’, most usually they would get drunk during the weekend and sit on the side of the hill with their head between their knees all day Monday and most of Tuesday. Most were chain smokers so we had to be vigilant about fires. After a couple of months, they returned to Christchurch. Hopefully there were some good outcomes.None of those men’s names appear on a honours board, yet they did their bit and paid a price... some were even shunned by their families. 

 

They deserve to be remembered. 

 

We shall remember them!

Fairies in My Garden

 

Fairies in my Garden

There were once two girls who managed to capture photographs of fairies in their garden. They used old fashioned, unsophisticated technology yet their black and white photographs ‘fooled’ the experts for many years. Unfortunately, when the girls became elderly women, they admitted the hoax to the world... it is sad that with the onset of age, they had lost their childhood spirit. But we only have their word that they doctored those photos, so at the end of the day, theirs isn’t proof that fairies don’t exist. Could those old women have succumbed to the conspiracies of the elderly?

Each tooth that came out of my head when I was young, was replaced under my pillow with a piece of silver; a three-penny piece! My mother told me it was the work of fairies, they made the exchange... and my Mum would never tell fibs to me! So at least twenty times during my young life, some fairy or fairies must have worked under my pillow, in a confined and dangerous place to make those exchanges. Why, their wings could have been damaged or tiny limbs broken! And they were quiet so as not to wake me.

Then there’s Tinker Bell to think about, y’know, from Peter Pan? The pair have been childhood heroes for so many people over the years. And then there’s the fairy dust that we hear so much about these days... the stuff politicians use to cover their lies. So who among us don’t believe in fairies... only skeptics? I can assuredly tell you, that there are fairies in my garden! I have never actually seen one, but you can’t see the wind either, yet you know its there. Isn’t that so?

The fairies in my garden must have to be so careful, because it can be a dangerous place, what with the lawnmower and the hoe and rake... perhaps they can turn invisible? Fairies could be prey for birds too, and there are lots of birds in my garden, quail, thrush and blackbirds could make a tasty meal out of them. But fairies in the way of nature have evolved to protect themselves, with camouflage, invisibility and perhaps even magic... I wouldn’t be surprised. And that’s the reason I have never spotted them.

You may then wonder why I’m so sure about their existence. Well it’s because I’ve seen their toilet! They are little red, star-shaped things... and to put it bluntly, they really stink! I have no idea what their diet is, but the left-behind isn’t at all nice and it attract flies, lots of flies.

We forestry people see them up in the forest too but we were a little more coarse with our language, so as polite as I can be, they are fairy sh** houses. Forestry people are curious folk and when we come upon them, we check them out and sometime we see little tollies in bowl but still, even we have never seen a fairy... but logically, if their are fairy toilets, there must be fairies. Isn’t that so?

****

The small, red, star-shaped forest fungi, Aserow rubra takes advantage of moist forest and garden conditions, it is commonly known as Anemone fungi – never used by us because we have our own name for it. The fungi has an attractant smell for flies, the method they use to disperse their spores.

The Barabbas Effect

 

The Barabbas Effect

I watched the rising moon last evening, it was the first full moon after March 21 a portent to the Christian festival of Easter... which is, at least for some, an important event. For others it’s but another holiday, made a legal right by their government. Some contest the validity of the Bible as a historical record while others believe implicitly in it’s literal accuracy... I’m not about to debate that; it’s the author(s) of the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus and their enlightenment that’s of intrigue... they perceived one of the foibles of humanity.

The clergy, priests, elites or whatever they were, had become nervous about their loss of status and power over the population because of the growing popularity of the Jewish preacher, Jesus. Some followers had promulgated the idea that He was the king of the Jews... though He didn’t say so. The elites petitioned the Roman governor to arrest, or perhaps even terminate Him, and governor Pilate’s acquiescence was because his role was to keep the peace in the land. He was looking after his own position.

Standing before Pilate, Jesus’ interrogation went something like this.

Pilate asks, ‘Are you King of the Jews?’

Jesus replied, ‘You have said so.’ Although John’s version was. ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it about me?’ and added, ‘My Kingdom is not of this world.’

Pilate asks, ‘So, you are a King?’ To which there was no rely.

Pilate asks again, ‘So you are a king?’

Jesus replies: ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth’.

We don’t know what Pilate thought of those answers, but said,’ I find no fault in this man.’

The religious leaders, among themselves, had accused Jesus of blasphemy, but they knew Pilate would only take action on a political matter such as an insurrection. When Pilate was about to release Jesus, in their eagerness to have Jesus executed, the chief priests and others declared, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’And cunningly, they previously had loaded the crowd with stirrers who cheered their support and the crowed joined them.

It was the time of the festival of Passover; the tradition was that the governor would release one condemned (to die) prisoner to honour it, so Pilate put it to the crowd to choose between Barabbas and Jesus... and the crowd chose Barabbas! Even though Barabbas was a hardened criminal and a murderer. This was the first Barabbas effect.

These events happened nearly two thousand years ago, yet human nature, in light of the living present, hasn’t changed. People can be easily manipulated into supporting causes that don’t stack up legally... or even morally. Take for example the illegal migrants who have ‘invaded’ western nations... they have strong support among large sections of the local populations; without consideration of the legality or likely impacts that logic would normally carry.

There indulgence show of a teenage girl, who claimed the planet would collapse because of climate change... without following logic or listening scientist with an alternate view. It has to be asked why whole economies should change because of her rants, yet that’s what happened. Her flawed understanding of the issue aligned with those of the United Nations and World Economic Forum’s, which is why governments acquiesced. The financial and energy fallout has impacted many countries in an ongoing way.

The so-called Covid pandemic was inflated by the World Health Organisation and governments fell for their rhetoric by introducing draconian rules that in the fullness of time have been found to be unnecessary, and against common law. Other vaccines prevent the contraction of the disease but the Covid ones didn’t; masks were ineffective... mandated while it has been known since the 1950’s that breathing one’s own carbon dioxide inside masks is a long-term risk. But the rules-must-be-adhered-to crowd who like to throw their weight around, threw it; and the unvaccinated became Typhoid Marys... or the unclean, and were booted out of their workplace. Those who had done their research and had knowledge were shut down. Even though it was known that second shots risked myocarditis to young males, it was still mandated by some governments.

Today (time of writing) is the anniversary of an event that remains shocking in this country. A large group of women were and remain against the idea that biological men dressed in skirts being allowed to enter traditionally women’s spaces. They brought in a woman from overseas who had been outspoken on the issue, agreeing with the women’s group. The media and some politicians painted the woman as being radical, anti-trans and far-right. But the woman had always said she has no issue of people going about their own business as long as it hurts nobody; but the fact is, biological men in women’s spaces is a problem for many women... which is why she speaks about it.

The women were going to hold a rally, but it didn’t go ahead because there was a counter-protest by vociferous trans-activists and their supporters, empowered by the mainstream media. They had the clear intent of roughing up the women, their guest included. The trans-activist had a perfect right to put their case under the law, but instead chose violence. The police for their part allowed the roughing up to continue... some of it quite dangerous and after wounds were inflicted, they put a cordon around the guest. In the aftermath, the media gave tacit support to the trans-activists for the roughing up and the justice system didn’t serve justice to the women. Even though there was violence, there was widespread support for the trans-activists actions. At no time did the trans people state their case or show a preparedness to debate the issue.

The Barabbas effect remains alive and well, even if it’s been so for two thousand years. Easter will always remind us of it. After all, life is simpler by dismissing logic and allowing others to think for us... isn’t it?

Piglets

 

Piglets

Wild pigs were a nuisance in the New Zealand landscape, in the forest, their worst trait was tipping over year old seedlings in the hunt for worms and grubs... ‘wild’ has an unfortunate ring about it so maybe I should have said, ‘feral’ but either way, it was one of my duties to control their numbers in my area. There were two basic reasons, first because it was the law of the land; land mammals were not indigenous, therefore the government called them, ‘noxious’. The other reason was pig hunters... some tended to come during the working week, which was a safety issue for my workers, so it was my job to ‘control’ them too.

Pigs are credited with intelligence and I’ll go along with that; sometimes a mob of pigs, will leave the smallest member behind to attract the dog’s intention while the others slink away quietly; although it could be that the slowest animal simply can’t move as fast as the others, which is more likely the truth. But a weaner wild pig put in a pen of domestic weaners will be the boss, and ‘organise’ them, like teaching them to poo in one corner. Caught young, wild pigs make good pets... that is, if you happen to want a pet pig. But don’t forget, kuni-kuni pigs are often kept as pets.

My two dogs used to prefer to catch pigs that on the hook would weigh around ninety pounds, somehow they’d figured out they could control it by each dog holding onto the pig’s ear and leaning their bodies against the body of the pig. I came along in response to the squeals, flipped the pig on it’s back and dispatched it. Bigger pigs were too strong to hold, but would bail, which risked the dogs being poked by a tusk. Both dogs would straddle piglets or weaners, not harming them just not allowing then to run off. Mrs. Matches, the widow who owned the huts I used live in, enjoyed cooking piglets in chicken fat after stuffing them with crushed pineapple; occasionally I would take one to her and we would dine on it. With weaners, I would take them back to headquarters and my workers would take them home to rear as baconers, and during the winter, we had townies come on the government’s employment schemes, and they would take them home, for both pets or to rear.

Sometimes when the vehicles were otherwise occupied, I would walk with my dogs, perhaps a couple of miles on the public road into the forest. On one occasion, I had already bagged an old sow and dragged her to where I could come back later to pick her up, when I heard the squeal of a smaller pig and knew it would be Yogi with a trapped weaner. It was a nice ginger one and remembering that old Frosty had asked for one, I crooked her in my arm and headed back to headquarters. It happened to be school holidays and there was a holiday house where two kids were staying with their mother. The girl was the elder of the two, and they used come up to headquarters at smoko time because I always had a packet of biscuits, which they dipped into.

As I passed the house both came running out, because the girl liked Yogi and made a fuss of him... the bugger, he as aloof with everyone else, including me, but he lapped up the attention of the little girl! The girl went for Yogi and the boy’s attention focused on the ginger pig. I was going to say. ‘Watch she might bite!’ But he was too quick and she did! She took a piece of meat out of the middle muscle on his patting finger. By now we were nearer the headquarters that their house, so I gave him my handkerchief to staunch the flow, and made pace to headquarters where I patched him up... only thing, he wouldn’t be picking his nose for a while.

It had to happen... Bob wanted to take a weaner home, and he put it in his tucker bag... I can’t recall who was driving but there were four in the car which stopped on the main street to let one out. The weaner took the chance of the open door and scuttled out. It stood for a minute, surprised at the new environment; the three quickly got out of the car, thinking to catch it. No such luck! The road has four lanes with parking and trees in the middle, and the little pigs ran right across, with ears pinned back at the screech of brakes! The chasers had lost sight of it, but the bookstore owner stood at the shop door and called out, ‘Anyone lost a pig?’ Adrenaline must have blocked logic in the chasers’ brains because they tried to to corner an alarmed pig in the shop with the door still open... it left a tolly as a calling card, and ran back out onto the street! But an elderly fellow, had witnessed the shenanigans and had used his walking stick expertly as a crook, to hook the handle around the piglet’s neck. He must have been a sheep farmer!

There were a few piglets that got away for various reasons and two got away, and had totally disappeared... but years later, pig rooting appeared on a school paying field, but the pig was never seen. Lenny had an experience... he bought an expensive toy puppy, a tiny thing. That first night he left it asleep beside the fire in its basket. The next next morning only its tail remained and suspicion fell on the big family cat, so he asked for a piglet to replace the dog and perhaps to teach the cat a lesson. The cat apparently took one look at the piglet, ran off and was never seen again!

Another fellow, whose name eludes me, had a son who was afflicted with one leg being a bit shorter than the other, so he had a pronounced limp. The pig he took home, quickly chummed up with the boy, behaving much like a puppy. Oddly, and of course, in town a dog had to be kept on a leash, but there was no bylaw that said pigs had to be kept on a leash, so the boy and pig walked the streets together quite happily... and on pet day at school, the boy and the pig received lots attention of attention.

Hans, a Dutch fellow was sick on payday, and because I had business to do in town I decided to call on him, to give him his money and collect his signature. I knocked on his door and his wife, who I had not met answered. I told her what I had come for, and without a word, she smiled put a finger to her mouth, meaning silence, and ushered me into the living room. There sitting in a chair before a roaring fire was Hans, and lying on him, was a half-grown pig, both were fast asleep!

Yes pigs make good pets!

Artisans

Artisans

It’s fair to say that artisans had an influence in securing the right to vote for you and me; it’s something that isn’t widely appreciated these days, and especially by those who are dissatisfied by their government of the day or what they stand for. My Welsh coal mining ancestors were involved in the Chartist movement, which was one of the small cogs that contributed to Britain’s First Reform Act of 1832... wrestling some of the political power from the elites of the day into the hands of workers. They risked their loss of freedom or even death by standing up for the rights of their fellow man.

Today, we call them ‘tradesmen’, but many of the trades that were, are no longer performed today or have morphed into being done differently. As a youngster I was fortunate enough to watch some artisans as they performed their craft, and I have tried to emulate some of them over the years.

My father had a business selling milk and owned a couple of trucks... under the council laws, businesses with heavy vehicles had to have some form of identification of who they were, which doubled in our case as advertising. The identification was done in an attractive way by artisans. Today it is done just as expertly with vinyl lettering or graphics or something called, ‘vehicle wrapping’, but for our trucks, we had the sign-writer visit our place. The guy turned up with his paint pots and brushes and with a stick with a pad on the end to support his paint-brush hand. He marked out the general shape with chalk... ‘Halswell Dairy’ was written in a half circle on the door, then my father’s name was written horizontally beneath, on an another line beneath, he wrote our phone number. To make it stand out, there was shading... it was all done with skill, based on the painters eye, knowledge of writing styles, and quickly. On the tray, he did old-fashioned coachwork, perfectly straight lines and squiggles.

I’ve had a go at it, not successfully, or freehand, but I learned at school about a stencil cut from cardboard. A square of five inches each side – draw a faint line in the centre facing and a heavier line on each side of it at half an inch making the centre rib one inch wide. Top and bottom score a line one inch wide parallel to the top and bottom; on each side draw a line one inch from the edge. So inside you should have two oblongs that you cut out. With that you can draw any number or letter – the sharp points can be trimmed off to make a nicer shape. Give it a try.

We had a piano in our house, not that I tickled the ivories, but I watched the man who came give it a facelift; if that’s the right term. The varnish had lost it’s glow. His tool for preparing the surface wasn’t sandpaper but a thin piece of metal that had been carefully burred slightly. He used it to gently scrape the surface down to the timber... which I guess was burred walnut. He was really careful and time seemed not to matter to him. When he was satisfied and had removed every bit of dust, he prepared shellac – sort of flakes that required some heating – and he made a pad of cloth that he used to wipe the polish on... it took several coats. The man took the keys off the piano and cleaned the ivory... I wasn’t there so have no idea exactly how he did it, but those keys came up sparkling! In woodwork class, we had a try with the burred steel and shellac on veneer, but sadly I wasn’t competent enough to make a good job of it, but I did use a similar pad to spread linseed oil on my cricket bats... which lasted for several seasons.

Artisans seemed to appear randomly; I was visiting a friend whose parents had been carrying out expensive renovations to their house, and they had employed a man with fine brushes to paint wood gain onto door architraves... that is the door surroundings. Apparently it was a thing in the past if you had the money. Simply put wood grain is the growth rings of a tree when cut longitudinally and knots are the cross section of a branch. A knot can be inter-grown, or alive when the tree is cut, or if it is darker than the surrounding wood, the branch was dead... and sometimes bark surrounds the knot, which is a bark-encased knot. The bark can rot quite quickly and the knot sometimes falls out... creating a knot-hole. And in New Zealand there can be small round holes where a stem cone was attached to the trunk of the tree and push out as the trunk grows.

Having spent years growing Radiata Pine, and pruning the bottom of the trunk to grow ‘valuable clear, knot-free timber, the house we built was of exposed Radiata Pine that hadn’t been pruned, thus showing knots, stem cone holes and grain... much like the inside of a log cabin. The beauty of that... if you have an imagination, it is possible to see shapes, like cats, ghosts, birds and clouds. The why of anyone painting over timber and then painting on grain is, or was the prerogative of the person with the money, but it was popular to do so in the past.

Beside my keypad, I have a notebook to write down little notes that take my fancy as I’m entertaining myself on the computer (or researching), and because I’m left handed, it sits on my left and I use the mouse right handed. Probably from those past influences, when my entertainment fails to entertain, I doodle on my notebook where frequent images turn out to be letters with shading and various wood grains, sometimes with knots.

 

Cat D6

 

 

 

Sometimes I meet up with and old mechanic mate of mine, who despite not being at all academic, was the most competent mechanic I’ve had fix machinery. Back in the 1960’s we made progress without following rule and regulations, and he reflected how drivers used to reverse large, loaded trucks, which led me to this. My mate was into Caterpillar machinery.

 

Cat D6 Dozer

We had Cat D6 dozer on the forest, and while Mick was the driver, I’d spent a few long days on the old girl too. Mick and I put in many of the roads on the forest, although my role was doing the survey work and sorting out the culverts, and keeping an eye out for problems along the way. I used to survey and plot onto chats all the work we did on the forest, roads and compartments mainly… compartments being the areas planted in a given year. To do all of that, I used army surplus prismatic compass, abney level and chain, all bound in leather cases… and my trusty survey book.

I didn’t pre-survey the road, batters or cut and fills before we did any dozer work, I was a rule of thumb fellow. If there was a hill we had to descend, which was most often, I used to go to the other side of the gulley and using the abney level side on (usually, you peer through it lining the crosshair with the target, and move the spirit level to level and read off the degrees); side on you line the body of the level where you want the road to go, set the spirit level and read off the degrees. Twelve degrees is the comfortable slope for a logging truck but some pinches ten was ok-ish. Of course, less than twelve degrees was even better… but on short ridges you have to compromise.

 I would then go to the roadline and flag it with survey cloth, which was nothing but white linen that I’d ripped into inch wide strips. Using my Abney level set on the degrees selected, I would flag the line at the top of the cut, or batter, for Mick to follow. But on one particular line, I struck a problem. It was a south-lying face and covered with tall native scrub, so visibility was a bit of a challenge. Half way down, smack in the middle of the roadline was a massive Totara tree, around six feet in diameter. Of course I could have cut it down, and blown the stump to bits; Totara is a stately tree but it was defoliating, so near the end of its life… saying that is relative, because it could hang on for another hundred years. Old Bert my mate, co-debater and sparring partner happened to be with me in case I needed a slasher,  he said, ‘Y’know, this tree saw Captain sail by.’ That was enough for me, the tree was going to stay!

 

It was just a matter of undoing the work I had done, which was a day’s work, and had the choice of a chain or so above the tree, or a chain below it; I chose the former because it made for a better crossing in the creek where we would need a three-foot culvert… and the fill to cover it. The cut was on the right-hand side of the dozer, which is the side of the hydraulic blade lever and it’s natural that Mick wasn’t watching the left-hand side as much, so he tended to make the road a bit narrower. Especially on steep land, but where native scrub is growing, I didn’t like stripping the vegetation off, but I wanted the whole carriageway to be on solid, not fill. If it was on fill, fifty years hence, the scrub rots and the road slumps.

 

About every chain (22 yards) we put in one-foot culvers to stop the water table scouring deeply, I’d just spend a day’s culvert placement with three guys, their shovels and a crowbar after Mick had done his best with the dozer digging out the bed. Another problem surfaced, getting towards the gulley, Mick struck blue rock… most of the rock was either red metamorphosed sandstone, or ‘rotten’ schist. The schist wasn’t rotten at all but is just younger, weak, yellow so fractured easily. The blue rock is still schist but baked a bit more and hard as the hobs of hell! The dozer had a winch, not rippers so we had to blast the rock. I had a Shot-firer’s ticket so that was my job too.

The compressor had an old Vanguard motor, and no battery, so we cranked it to start, and always it started well even after sitting unused for months. It was on a single axel, making it a challenge to back it down the hill with the Commer truck. She had a canopy on the back to transport men, so there was no visibility and the mirrors were small. She had a running board so I did what the old lorry drivers used to do. I stood on the running board (step) with one foot, (door open) and the other on either the brake or the accelerator. One hand on the steering wheel, and the hard part was, there was no power steering! I only had to go forward a couple of times to reset, which wasn’t bad. When my Dad’s Ford truck had a full load of milk crates, that’s how we backed it too.

Mick and I spent a week on the jackhammer drilling the holes about a yard apart and some a couple of yards deep. A dusty job, because the cutting tip was tungsten in the shape of a cross with a hole in the middle, the jackhammer would ump the drill up and down five times and then do a quarter of a turn, after a bit, move the lever to stop the jumping and force compressed air to drive the dust up and out of the hole. We had a magazine for storing the gelignite and cortex detonating fuse, and we kept the detonators, and safety fuse in the storeroom cupboard, but I needed to order another six of cases of gelignite for a rock bluff on the other side of the gulley. I usually put one plug in each hole, joined them all with cortex and attached a detonator to the safety fuse and taped the det to the cortex, which makes it all go bang at once. Instantaneously.

Cortex is a manganese fuse, and I found it best to tape it in the direction of the flow fron the det. Some people tie it, but it’s useful because it makes each stick go off at once. To shorten a concrete culvert pipe, three wraps of it around the pipe, will just disintegrate that piece of that pipe and leaves the reinforcing to be cut with bolt cutters. We even used it to blow the tops out of trees to make a logging spar. The safety fuse has gunpowder in the middle but it didn’t light easily for safety reasons, so you cut the fuse diagonally, placed the matchhead on the gunpowder and strike the matchbox against it. I had a wisdom tooth removed and a detonator fitted in there nicely, so that’s how I crimped the fuse to the det. It isn’t particularly dangerous… the explosive bit is at the very end, and the rest is a tube that the fuse fits into, so the boom bit was outside my mouth and I just chomped on the soft bit and it worked like a charm.

The rock bluff turned out to be quite a mission, because at the start we could only blow a dozer-blade full, because there was nowhere for the dozer to ‘stand’ but after clearing the rest, the last blow was two cases on a flat ‘paddock’ of rock, and up she went. We just had to lower it by about a yard. Those days, we had no safety equipment, helmets, earmuffs (no wonder I’m deaf) goggles or gloves. We needed access, so we just poked the road through with the gear we had.

As a team we used to work hard, but there was a certain joy in doing it, and there’s the difference to today… regulation stifles us.