Adding to the Landbank

The planting on the Diamond Hill block was about complete and there was only another year’s worth of plantable ground left and the situation worried me. I had seen some forests that had been planted up, so they were mothballed, waiting on an appropriate time harvest the trees. My worry was for my workers most of who had families and property, probably mortgages too, so they would suffer if they were put off.

I knew old Bert Fraser who owned a four thousand acre block of land bounded by the south branch of the Waianakarua River. It was second class farmland with a good covering of gorse. I had been on the block from the Razorback Road end several times mainly to help Mick haul out deer and pigs, also to help Nobby muster some cattle he had grazing up there. I also knew that Bert could be cantankerous old sod and it was wise to be on his good side!

One evening I decided to go down to see him and maybe talk him into selling. Now old Bert was a bachelor, or that was the story, but from time to time he had ‘housekeepers’ staying and the rumour was, ah well, never mind that, I was hoping he didn’t have company. The road finished at Bert’s house and he was always wary of ‘uninvited guests’. He must have heard me coming up the road because he was standing in the middle of his driveway with a shotgun bent over his arm. He just nodded when he saw it was me.

‘Gidday Bert,’ I said casually, ‘I’ve come for a bit of a yarn.’

‘Better come in then.’ He waved me inside.

The place smelled of dog, because there were two lying under the table, one stayed asleep and the other opened one eye and promptly closed it again. We sat at the table which was covered with newspaper. He only bought Saturday’s paper and after he read it he used it as a tablecloth, each day taking the top layer off, so he always had a clean tablecloth. From a cabinet he brought out a bottle of gin and two foggy glasses. Both were generous.

‘What are we going to talk about?’ he asked.

I waffled on and he waffled back for an hour or so and we were making good progress on lowering the level in the gin bottle, firewater thar stuff! Finally I told him why I wanted the yarn. His response was favourable and suggested we have and inspection the next day, he reminded me that there was no vehicle access, saying he would ride old Cassius and asked if I could borrow a motorbike or a horse. I borrowed one of Bill’s horses, a big white bugger.

Bert showed me the cleaner ridges and didn’t hide the fact that there was a lot of dense gorse. He also showed considerable areas of indigenous Manuka/Kanuka scrubland and indigenous bush. He showed the two trig sites neatly hewn out of the hard, sandstone. He explained that the main road through to Central Otago was proposed to go up the main ridge and across the south branch of the river. He told me about and showed the location of the packhorse track that Moeraki Station used to pack supplies over to Shag Valley Station which is situated on the modern road to Central Otago. I knew about the packhorsing because one of my old-codger-workers, Gib, had been one of the packers back in the twenties. It took them all day to get over to Shag Valley, but it was quicker than going around the road in those days.

Back at Bert’s house, I told him that the formalities were that he would have to write to our Dunedin office and offer the land at whatever price he had in mind. He asked me what I thought it was worth and while I didn’t want to be involved in pricing the place, he genuinely wanted some guidance. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue and told him so, but I knew of another, small block that sold for twelve dollars an acre, so I reckoned about ten would be fair for Bert. He agreed and added thirty five cents, to make it look good!

News came back fairly quickly that my bosses had turned down the offer, didn’t require the land on account of the gorse and the cost of land preparation! To my mind the gorse is why farming was not economical on the land and forestry was a better option. They had not even set foot on the land, and it was the opinion of Jerry the office clerk that the land was not worth buying! He came up regularly on the pay-run. Management’s attitude, he told me, was that our small forest was a Cinderella forest and they indeed planned to mothball it.

I was disappointed with the decision and contemplated buying and farming it myself. But the cost of livestock at the time was double the price of the land and I was unlikely to be able to raise that sort of money. Instead I conferred with my old mate, Allan-the-member-of-parliament. I was simply truthful that my workers would soon be out of a job and the township would slowly die.

Within six weeks, we were the owners of a new bock of land, a land bank of perhaps ten years! As far as my bosses were concerned, I was not very high in the popularity stakes and poor old (and uncaring) Allan-the-member-of-parliament was apparently below me! We both had broad shoulders and wide smiles though! They had the pip with me for a number of years, leaving me and a young university graduate to plan out the roading pattern, the compartments and species. We had the D6 Dozer and the budgets I prepared went through, so we all simply got on with the job of creating a forest. Maybe they were cautious that I had Allan-the-member-of-parliament on my side, but gradually they came around and our relationship became smooth.

As time went on, further blocks of land became available and were added to the land bank, through my bosses’ efforts, not mine! Four more uneconomical farms were bought up, and my role changed from roading, land preparation and silviculture to starting off the harvesting phase on the older block. It is pleasing to see now the southern foothills of the Kakanui Range clothed in sustainable forest, well-managed at that!  

Stupid Buggers!

Stupidity – Two

Our road is busier these days. Back in the day, the only traffic was the forestry boys heading to and from work, the sawmill workers making the same journey, and occasionally, the run-holder were the only vehicles using the road. So I’m not used to driving in heavy traffic. When I was participating in a course at Lincoln College, I had to travel through the guts of Christchurch, during the rush hour, and I encountered some ill-mannered drivers. The lines of cars at the intersections made the directional arrows painted on the road surface impossible to see, and they were the only indication of which lane I was supposed to be in. It’s all very well for the locals but this country bumpkin had difficulty. People rushing to work had no patience for me make my way while trying to figure out the roading pattern and yes, they obviously thought I was stupid….

At the start of my career my work involved the establishment of exotic forest and administering the Forest and Rural Fires Act, but as far as I was concerned, my greatest responsibility was to my personnel and their safety. Forestry is one of the more dangerous occupations to be involved in and while we were not endowed with the fancy safety gear of today, I like to think we followed safe practice.

One day I was sharing a cup of tea at smoko with my pruning crew, when we heard several shots, not too far away, and the shots kept coming with occasional bullets whizzing high above our heads. I told the men to keep low, I hopped in my truck and raced to where I knew the shots were coming from. I saw the old beat-up car first and then one guy was leaning over the bonnet aiming a rifle in the direction my men were still sitting! His companion was standing back, the spectator, probably waiting his turn.

They stopped at my approach and the shooter held the rifle, a .303, roughly in my direction, but not in a threatening way. I suggested that he put the rifle on the bonnet of the car, which he did. You have to be reasonably civil when the other guy has a firearm!

‘Where are you guys from?’ I asked, I knew most of the local youth and didn’t recognise these two.

‘Town.’ Replied the taller of the two.

‘You guys look too young to own a firearms licence, so who does the rifle belong to?’ I asked.

‘It’s my Dad’s.’ replied the taller.

‘Does he know you have his rifle?’ I asked him.

‘Yes.’ Said the shorter one, but the taller thought it better to tell the truth.

‘Fellas,’ I explained, ‘I have a gang of men down there working in the trees, and funerals are bloody expensive!’

Neither of them blinked.

‘What were you shooting at?’ they had blatted off a lot of shots, and the ground was littered with shell casings.

‘Target practice.’ replied the shorter.

‘Why pick here to do your target practice,’ I asked, ‘you have been firing across the road, its only twenty metres?’

‘We saw no animals,’ the taller said, ‘so we thought was would have a few shots.’

‘What were you shooting at then?’ I didn’t need the answer, I could see the fencepost with slices ripped through it. I though I saw something odd though so asked them to walk with me to the post.

Stuck in a crack in the post was live round! These guys were trying to hit the percussion cap so the post would split open! I took the round out and turned to speak to them.

‘You guys don’t realise how dangerous this is.’ I told them, ‘If you hit that cap, you don’t know where the shell will go! More of a problem is that the cordite could set the place on fire!’

No response, just the dumb look.

‘Look fellas,’ I told them, ‘you are way outside of the law here, and actually in deep trouble. I have the authority to confiscate your rifle and your vehicle and put you in the hands of the law and your Dad could be in bigger trouble for not securing the firearm.’

Now they looked more worried than dumb.

‘I’m not going to do any of that.’ I took the rifle, removed the three or four rounds left in the magazine – there was still one in the breech – and I removed the bolt. ‘I’ll keep these bullets, now bugger off back to town and lock the rifle away! And actually, I don’t want to see either of you out here again!’

I supervised the turning manoeuvre and watched the car make dust down the road and after picking up the live rounds and spent shell casings, I went back to set the men to work. My reply to them when they asked who was doing the shooting?

‘Stupid bloody townies’

  

Saving Some Forest

Early settlers found New Zealand’s Podocarp forest to be a valuable timber resource and trees such as Rimu, Miro, Matai, Kahikatea, and Totara were milled into excellent timber.

On the East coast of the South Island, there are but a few remaining examples of Podocarp forest.

Herbert Forest was established on land that was uneconomical for farming with gorse and bracken fern competing with forage grasses. The land was very suitable for growing Radiata Pine, Douglas Fir and Corsican Pine, but the challenge was land preparation - an expensive undertaking because in those days most of the work was manual.

I was sent to the forest because the Officer in Charge was hospitalized with cancer, so although I was not quite qualified, three months short of receiving my Ranger Certificate, I became acting OiC. I was in charge of a bunch of capable men, half of them not long from retirement and the rest had ten years on me. They knew more than me, but we got on fine.

There was a three hundred acre enclave of gorse that was purchased later than the rest of the forest because the owner was tardy at selling and I was charged with the responsibility of converting it into sustainable pine forest without burning the rest of the forest down!

To the West of this enclave, is a deep gulley, which is the catchment area of the Glenburnie creek and. The gulley is beautifully clad in native bush with Podocarps in the deeper parts and Manuka/Kanuka on the fringes. Some of it is second growth because it was logged over one hundred and fifty years ago.

George, the District Forester, looked on the map, and saw that if some wide tongues of indigenous bush were removed, the forest line would be ‘nice and straight’. So I was instructed to remove the tongues of native forest by establishing the line and above it, chipping notches in the tree trunks and applying a chemical salt called ammate. So without actually removing the standing trees, we could under-plant with Douglas Fir, a shade tolerant species.

I took my prismatic compass and a couple of workers with slashers to establish the line and my team was ready with axes to cut the notches. Access under the forest was easy because there was a population of pigs and they kept the floor clean, allowing us to have a good look at the native forest. It was obvious to us that the bush had been logged previously because there were rotting stumps and some pits where sawing had been carried out. It was also obvious that the early loggers had taken only merchantable size trees and left trees that were smaller, pole stage or seedlings, so by now these had grown into magnificent specimens! Straight away I became determined that this bush was not to be harmed!

Bert and Gib were the guys I had chosen to carry out the poisoning work and they weren’t keep on the job either. I told them that I would go to a recent neighbor, Alan-the-member-of-parliament but Bert counseled that they had just broken me in as a boss, and didn’t the crew didn’t want to lose me for someone worse! Actually he knew and I knew that it would not do my career any good if I went to communicate with Alan. So Bert wrote him a letter, complaining that the forest, a government owned forest, was poisoning indigenous trees. Alan took the letter to the minister who referred the matter to my district office, and they must have thought it a hot potato, because word filtered back that the forest was in fact not poisoning indigenous trees! Public servants eh?

A fuming District Ranger, Keith arrived at my office door ready to chew my ear, suspicious of my friendship with Alan, apparently Bert’s name had not been mentioned. I reacted passively, which took the wind out of his angry sails.

‘Come and see at the patch of native bush,’ I invited, ‘there are magnificent Rimu, Miro and Totara down there, not to mention huge Kanuka.’

I drove up there while Keith rambled on about big mouths and local, interfering members of parliament. When we arrived I marched off quickly giving Keith no choice but to follow me and even though his feet were not as sure as mine, he too admired the trees when he finally caught up. After all Keith was a tree man of some renown!

‘I would like to preserve these trees, Keith.’ I told him, ‘It would be a shame to poison them and leave them to rot. Besides, if you look at the area we are gaining for production, it’s quite small.’

‘Well what do you propose?’ Keith asked, seriously. At least he was listening.

‘I would like to make a walking track for schools and Joe public to use. A sort of learning tool.’ I suggested.

It was difficult to read what Keith was thinking, so I continued. ‘There are not many Podocarps left on the whole of the East coast north of Dunedin.’

‘It looks steepish to me,’ said Keith, and I regretted marching him so quickly, ‘but if you flag the route, I will make a decision.’ No indication of when, so I took the bull by the horns.

‘I’ll take you back to headquarters and you can have lunch with Albert.’ I said. ‘I will flag it and bring you back up after lunch.’

Flagging the proposed track location was not at all difficult because previously I had a good look at the area, so using white survey cloth, I marked a good track out. When Keith came back and walked it with me and he happily approved of the route and the idea there and then!

The very next day I had Bert and Gib start forming the track as per my instruction of suitability for my aged mother to negotiate – low, long steps with flat footbridges crossing the small water channels. The pair did an excellent job, as I expected they would.

This track was the first of a network of public walking tracks within the forest and were used extensively for education and recreation before the government sold off the asset.

Unfortunately the tracks fell into disrepair under a new regime of the exclusion of the general public.

There is a happier note however, the forest changed hands yet again and the new owners are good corporate citizens who support the use of the tracks and the local tramping club now maintains them to a high standard.

Some fifty years after it was formed, the Podocarp Loop track presents visitors with a stunning example of pre-European forest which is now under protection.