Workplace Accidents

Forestry and particularly logging is a dangerous industry and NZ union chiefs are asking for an inquiry after three deaths so far this year.

Safety and protective clothing was not cool when I was a young forest ranger trainee, and I recall sniggering at American cowboy movies when they wore gloves when handling barbed wire - 'bloody softies'!

There was a safety organisation, The Green Cross,  and we were required to attend coursed and receive certificates for a number of years. One of the films sticks still in my memory. A bulldozer was left with its hydraulics up. Children came to play on the machine and as one of the children crawled under the blade, another on the seat bumped the lever. There was an image of child's hands losing life.

For some reason the organisation faded away and the green cross has been used for other things from environmental, cannabis to child adoption.

Gradually it came about that safety equipment was introduced and became mandatory, and a  consciousness of safety was introduced. So standards now are very good - pressure from government organisations such as Occupational health and Safety & Accident Compensation Commission has helped ensure this as both organisations have teeth.

If we go back to the New Zealand Forest Service, there was an branch (excuse the pun) set up called 'Work Study'. The focus was not so much on safety, but quantify the work process and formulating efficient methods.

This was very good work and the main idea was to be able to set work targets to allow the payment of bonus payment for greater work output - but not at expense of safety.

Actual work content was measured (while working safely), allowance was made for slope, undergrowth, rest and toilet.

The bonus rate was an amount above the hourly rate depending of the percentage of target achieved. There was a disincentive in the rate paid for anything over 110% and if 120% was achieved, the there was an error in target setting or the workers were cutting corners that would need investigation because likely, safety was being compromised.

Work study was also used to set contract rates.

The process was to set the rate, and then call for tenders from contractors. The contractor chosen would be the nearest to the calculated contract price.  Low prices would mean the contractor would cut those corners - or employ less experienced workers - or they would go broke and broke contractors are no use to anybody. High prices meant the contractors were or were intending to ripping the forest off!

With the demise of the NZFS, so has the branch, of Work Study.

I have no idea of how prices are worked out these days but I have seen several workplaces that operate on contract but have nothing to base the cost on.

'Oh last time it was $40 per tonne - this block looks a bit easier so but fuel is more costly, so we will make it $43 per tonne.' There is no real quantifying going on.

I'm not suggesting this is the reason there are more accidents, but perhaps a contributor.

If it looks like a crew are going to lose money, they may need to work faster, of .for more hours.

The investment is greater and per day financial output is huge, and has to be recovered. The forest owners though have no have to work within an environment of fluctuating log prices.

Sometimes it is nigh on impossible to predict a rope breakage or when a log will roll down a hill. Bottom line is that forestry work is dangerous and workers need to be vigilant, contractors need to be paid adequately and log prices to be stable. As far as better workplace conditions are concerned: forests are a natural environment on a wide variety of terrains - not much can be done about that.

ANZAC Day

April 25 is ANZAC day when servicemen & women are remembered.

All starting 1915 from the disaster at Gallipoli where so many were lost in an attempt to make landfall on Turkey during WWI.

During the intervening years, ANZAC Day commemorates, remembers and honours the fallen, the wounded, the returned of all conflicts that New Zealand has been involved in. The day also recalls the involvement of the whole country and the sacrifices made during those conflicts.

I was born late in 1943 and it is glib to say, 'at the tail end of the war' because there was a lot of death and destruction before it was all over.
In my early years, I have no memory of the war or the shortages it create in family life. I do remember sharing some dried fruit with a mate, being found out and receiving a swat from my mother!  She was probably saving the fruit for a special cake, and no doubt she had difficulty in replacing it - maybe she couldn't.
I recall talk of 'coupons' for food and other goods that were short - sugar. And especially my father referring to England as 'the old country' or simply 'home' even though he was never there.

At the age of eight, I joined Cubs and progressed through to Scouts. Lord Baden Powell based the organization on the military and we saluted the Union Jack as well as the New Zealand flag.
Prior to ANZAC day we would go door-knocking throughout the district with poppies to sell. It was almost an offense to return with unsold poppies!
Of course we would parade for the dawn service on ANZAC Day with the two flags. Always it seemed to be a frosty morning!
In those early days radio seemed to play sombre music but later interviewed veterans in the homes and hospital where they waited for God.

I found the military style of Scouts to be a joy, but at secondary school - Straven Academy  for Young Gentlemen : ok, Christchurch Boy's High School -  I found Cadets to somewhat more harsh! We dressed in 'sandpaper suits' and at the height of summer for a week, we learned parade drill and rifle drills.
We did not understand the wider implication of this - post war, the nation's youth needed to be prepared for another conflict and who could predict where the Korean War was headed?
So there was wisdom in the training we were given. And it did us more good than harm!

Then on to the New Zealand Forest Service in 1962, and thinking back, a lot of the equipment was ex-army (or military) even myself, I would go to ex-army stores to buy my clothes!
I have retained a military compass and abney level - in leather bound cases - and a survey chain. Also a pair on non-focusing binoculars with the government broad arrow on them - the arrow is dulled white maybe ivory.

We used ex-army .303 rifles for 'deer culling' and I have seen what those ex-army bullets do to meat and bone! This to me is the real horror of war! But it was not only bullets there were bayonets, grenades, mines, artillery and bombs!
I felt empathy when I shot a deer! How would I react to my mates being shot or blown up?

I have always maintained that politics is a dirty business, and politically, to get people to fight, you have to dispense propaganda, but once in the line, seeing your mates being shot/blown up brings out a hatred that propaganda cannot hope to engender, of course at the end of conflict it takes a long time for those emotions to fade away.

We had a good diet of war movies that, in a way were propaganda to encourage nationalism and I guess we remembered the actors more than the heroes - Kenneth Moore, Alan Ladd.
Home from the movie, we acted them out as kids do.

But with age, and sitting on a tractor, or planting a tree, the mind works and I wonder of the pain and suffering through countless wars over the years. How and why various leaders brought their populations to the brink of war. And certainly some of them needed to be halted.

The two main combatants that New Zealand has confronted are Germany and Japan. Both nations are small dots on the globe, yet they thought they could defeat the rest.
And it goes on - and it seems, sanity does not prevail.

But ANZAC's? We will remember them!

Adventures with cattle 6

With the advent of artificial insemination, new breeds were introduced to the area and Albert was keen to try the Charolais breed. He decided to keep the resulting bull calf and later encouraged me to use the bull over my cows.  

There was a problem though because the breed is big and so calving was a problem and very often the vet had to be called. Luckily I had heard about this problem so limited the feed of the cows during the last month of pregnancy when the embryo/calf grows most.

Anyway I had few calving problems and one of my bull calves threw close to the Charolais breed, so much so that I kept him and a few around the area brought their cows to be serviced.

Charolais breeders will say that the breed is very quiet and I would agree with that.

One day I noticed that the bull had a weeping eye, so I decided to yard him to see what the matter was.

I had yarded him before of course but with other animals, and I had never put him in the rough old crush that I had made because he was too big for it. Even the TB tester (the bovine manitu test) just did the test with him standing in the yard.

This time he was not keen to go into the yard so I enlisted the help of my wife, who happened to be seven months pregnant. Well the bull made a run for it, and in her direction! She had to take evasive action so I quickly abandoned that method of mustering and instead brought a few cows up to keep him company. This worked well but the bull knew very well that I intended to focus on him.

The yard gate was two meters high and made from 150 x 35mm macrocarpa timber, he just put his neck over it and the gate shattered like matchwood - such was the strength of this animal.

So I quickly patched the gate up using some iron pipe I had salvaged out of an old cattle stop and went through the process again.

Among the cows and trying to look at the bull's eye, I was not very safe, so decided to chance the crush!

With some coaxing he went in and broke to wooden bail that held the neck/head in place. But I managed a look at his eye and saw he had a barley grass seed in it.

Barley grass seeds are nasty because they are barbed and work their way in to skin, (or eyes) the more movement, the deeper it went.

There was no way I was going to remove the seed from the bull, so I called the vet, who was busy and he told me to try to remove it myself!

I found some rope and disabled the bull's head as securely as I could and actually he was more calm that I would have expected. But I could not get it out!

I rang the vet back and he said it would be the next day before he could be there. He advised me to try again.

Finally I was successful, I had water there and folded the lower eyelid down and grasped the seed - I felt it scratch a bit and I washed his eye out as best I could. 

The bull was patient as I undid the rope,  but I had to cut him out of the head bail with a chainsaw - that agitated him a bit!

Talking about feeling the barley grass scratch his eyeball, there was a new regulation from the freezing works that all cattle should be de-horned.

I called the vet to de-horn the season's calves and to bring out an implement that I could purchase. This was a a gadget that had two blades and you opened the handles to clip out the horn bud.

The vet instructed me to hold the calf by the neck and hold his head still by grasping the skin between its nostrils. Then the vet used the implement! I felt the grinding cut through the calf's nose! It revolted me!

We did the six calves and I purchased the implement, only because he had brought with him especially - but I never used the impliment and never de-horned any more of my calves - the freezing works took them just the same!

Adventures with cattle 5

The main trunk railway line passed through our property (as did Breakneck Road) so I had to exercise care when driving my cattle from one side to the other.

The goods trains were unpredictable but the passenger steamer express went South at around 1:05pm and North 3:15pm. (actually my father in law was a guard on the goods trains). Most usually I would phone the signal box and they would tell me where the trains were.

One Sunday afternoon I needed to drive the cattle across the line to the South side of the farm.

I had a dog that I was training and there were six cows and four yearlings to take across.

It was 12:30pm so I knew there would be no goods trains and there was at least thirty minutes before the steamer express. It only took a few minutes to cross the line.

All went well except the last two yearlings which the dog split from the her and they ran off down the paddock. I looked at the rest and they seemed to be heading for the south paddock, so I took the dog to muster the two yearlings.

The yearling were flighty and ran backwards and forwards but time was ticking and I looked up at the sound of the steamer express rounding the bend at 70mph! And the cows were grazing on the line! They hadn't crossed after-all but were grazing on the railway reserve.

After the smoke cleared away, there were two dead cows on the railway line and one wounded heifer in the south paddock.

We always had plans how we were going to spend any funds raised through out cattle and this represented a big loss!

The heifer had lost skin and was severely bruised and it seemed she would survive - I had no way or concept of reliving her pain, which would have been intense.

I made a sledge out of an old door and some fencepost and using pulleys and rope, I sledged the dead cows to a tree and hoisted them up to butcher them. I rang a butcher in town and he told me he could buy farm-killed meat.

I cut up the beasts as best I could and loaded them into my old Commer Cob. Phew the smell in there was not all that pleasant!

The butcher refused to take the meat because some had been bruised and it had not been bled properly! This makes the meat toxic!

So I ended up giving the meat to the Rabbit Board for dog tucker.

The skins realised $2.00 each - green and because the skinning was not as neat as they buy from the freezing works!

A financial loss and lesson, albeit an expensive lesson.

I will never forget the look of the driver of the train on his return trip at 3:15. I was loading a cow onto the makeshift sledge and he poked his head out the cab, shook is head as if to say, 'Silly bugger!'

Adventures with cattle 4

Allan Dick's place was not really set up for grazing animals, and he knew because he had been the leaseholder of Lilybank Station. But he wanted the grass chewed down so he bought two weaned heifer calves - they were both Hereford cross, one black with a white face and the other, a proper Hereford - red with a white face.

After they had grazed down the best grass, they escaped into the forest and grazed on the roadside. Allan tried to muster them and he enlisted my help as well. Particularly the red one was skittery and always ran off.

We expected some hunter would shoot them, but that did not happen and Allan suggested that perhaps we should target them.

In the end Allan said if I could catch them, I could have them and being a young married man in need of funds, I thought it was worth a try.

I used some cunning though. I drove my old, quiet cows up into the forest and very quickly the two renegade heifers joined them, so it was merely a matter of returning them all to my paddock, which was not a problem.

The black one settled down very quickly and was indeed - quiet. The red one was mad as a snake and if I walked into the paddock she would run off as far as she could.

'Oh she will settle down when she has calved!' I was advised, so with the others, I put her to the bull.

I noticed her as she began to calve and unfortunately her calf's hips became stuck. I walked down to try and help her but she ran to the top of the hill with her calf flapping behind her. I could not just leaver and approached again. She jumped the fence and now was alone - separated from the comfort of the other cows.

I walked towards her again slowly and she jumped another fence - all this was in Perter Anderson's property! The calf was still flapping behind her as she ran. So I took the long way and headed her off, just standing there and she bounced back over those two fences and when she saw me again she tried to clear the fence that was into the railway reserve. Her energy levels were down and her leg became caught in the fence and I saw her go down. 

Before I went down to her, I found a rope so was able to tie another leg to a fencepost. The calf was dead and I could not remove it.

I ran the vet who was busy but he advised me 'If the calf is dead, you can remove it surgically'. That meant, I had to cut the calf up to remove it!

The details are gory, and I wouldn't like to repeat it! However I removed the calf, bit by bit and I tried to clean the cow as best I could. 

I cut her from the fence and untied her and walked away. She stood up and joined the rest of the herd.

That cow was always mad and I took the first opportunity to send her to the freezing works, but not on her own, with others that were due to go.