The night after the storm

The annual Forestry Ball was an icon on the North Otago social calendar and it so happened that we had prepared for the 1975 function on the 2nd of August. It was a frantic day still cleaning up from the storm and helping folk who had no means of helping themselves, but we decided to go ahead with the Ball as a celebration that we had survived the storm.

There was one problem though. The water tank - a header tank really was outside on the roof and yep, you guessed it, it was blown away. So we jerry-rigged another tank, but it was not hooked up to the water system and I took on the task of keeping it filled with the Wajax tanker. I worked in the bar as well, so kept a good eye on the water needs - hand washing and dunny flushing.

As the night proceeded, and the drinking increased, so did the need for water. The tanker hold 200 gallons and I had to go away and fill it twice!
But you would think forestry people were only interested in the booze, but not so we could boogey with the best of them! Even to modern music!

Working in the bar, you see things that should not be repeated, so I won't but one guy went missing and was found, with half pie hypothermia in a ditch beside a gorse hedge - he had 'slipped'. A young lady slipped and fell on to a table of glasses and bottles and was drenched but wrung out her clothes in the toilet and carried on dancing - she said body heat would do the final drying.
There were stories of the storm - some of them very tall but worth listening to.

As usual there were sore heads in the morning and sore bones because dancing seems to use different muscles to that of forestry work.

I was first back at the hall to clean up the next morning and there was a good amount of food left over - as well as beer. The cleanup lasted well into the night and we were all pleased to use physical work as a detox.

Nick the Greek

Albert's niece had been overseas and she brought a husband home with her. The fellow was from Greece and Albert asked if we could employ him because he was unable to find work elsewhere.
I had never met a Greek before but had always been interested in Greek mythology, and I realize not that Hollywood portray Greek heroes very well. I expected all Greeks to have bulging muscles like the people on the Zumba ad!

Nick was a short, skinny fellow with dark skin and black, curly hair. He could barely speak English and he smelled of garlic.

As it happened, at the we were pruning twelve year old Radiata Pine from ground level to six metres. This meant we would climb up the tree to about six metres and prune our way down. We used a jacksaw [with very sharp teeth] and it was sometimes better to prune some branches on the way up. But not everyone liked heights and Nick did not!

It was usually my role to train new workers and explain the technique and the reasons for doing that way and the very reason we did that work at all. Nick did not want to climb up the tree - so I climbed up there with him. He was shaking all the way, and I told him not to look down - but he did, even though he did understand me. He wasn't very strong either! And he couldn't use the saw - but he was very careful not to nick his hands. Later we were able to provide leather gloves - much to the chagrin of Gerry Kavanagh.
That first day, he completed eight trees - normally a person could do 100 -120. I could see we would have to be patient with this guy, and gradually he built up strength and ability and was able to fully partake in the general forestry work.

Men are men and Nick's workmates did not teach him English as I would have hoped. They delighted in teaching him swear-words and he thought that was normal. Nick smoked those stinking black cigarette things and his teeth were in a poor state [I didn't expect that because of those Hollywood movies - I thought Greeks had pearls in their mouths]. Anyway, one day Nick complained about toothache and I took him into my own dentist, Mr. Sligo. It was the first time Nick had been to a dentist and the pain shocked him - so he swore and abused Mr. Sligo! I was embarrassed about this and the combination of stinky cigarette, garlic and rotten teeth on his breath then the swearing, so I apologized to my dentist, but he seemed unworried.

Nick had a hard time of from his workmates really because they did not like the foreign smells and the 'different' attitudes, so they did not allow him too much leeway but I did not intervene very much because he did not modify his approach even when he spoke better English. But he stuck it out.
I found this encounter to interesting from the point of view of social interaction.

Archie

Archie Woodrow used to a cobbler, working at McDiarmid's in Oamaru. He used to drive the worker's bus from Hampden to Oamaru in the morning and and back at night. The bus was put on by Waianakarua Garage in the days of Jim Robertson and Bert Bennett and as people gradually preferred driving themselves, Archie ended up driving Commer van - pink in colour (if that means anything).
Archie lived almost dead center of Herbert township with his little wife and kids - kids that I did not get to know really but it was one of those families that staunchly support each other. They has looney red dogs that yapped if you called!
Archie would head South about the time I got out of bed and if he didn't see a light, he would toot to wake me. I had never asked him to do that, and I guess he did the same to other folk - I don't know.

Well the worker's bus finally stopped because it was unprofitable and McDiarmid's shed their cobbler. So Archie came to me looking for a job.
The fitness level of a cobbler does not match that required to be a forestry worker and I know very well that anyone starting forestry work must go through a pain barrier that can last weeks. Archie was past 50 years old when he started and he never once complained about his sore bones. This is probably a tribute to his nature of always looking on the bright side and that infected the rest of his workmates thus making them easier to manage.
Whenever the work became tough or unpleasant, Archie would quote, 'Well after all we're luck to have a job!' and there was no answer to that but to get on with the job.

One day Archie and his crew were walking down a track to begin work when he snapped a Douglas Fir branch to avoid it flicking in his face. Unfortunately the branch shattered and a small spike punctured his eyeball. He didn't realize that it was actually punctured, instead he thought he had some debris under his eyelid. Each crew carried a first aid kit, and so he washed his eye with Optrex. This just caused him more pain, so eventually I recieved a radio call to pick him up. Of course I could see nothing in his eye, and his pain was more than obvious, so I took him into hospital where they quickly saw what was wrong - there was a splinter actually embedded in his eyeball! I left him in hospital and called at his home to tell his wife what had happened.

I usually took people who had been injured either into their doctor or to hospital. We had to file a report on all accidents and there were certain forms to fill in for ACC purposes. I actually preferred to take people to hospital rather than their doctor because hospitals tended to give less time off to recuperate. Thinking back that may sound miserly but I felt that I was responsible to the joe-blow taxpayer to be entirely fair and I tried to tread that path.
I guess I became fairly hardened to broken bones and blood, and I used to stay ' as sort of comfort' actually with the person being treated. My worst experience was when a temporary worker whacked an axe into his knee! It was a bit of a mess and he wanted to go to his doctor rather than hospital. There was debris in the wound and the doctor started by putting several injections directly into the wound. This time I was not quite as hard as I thought and felt a bit woozy so sat down and didn't watch any more! I'm always amazed and medical people and their incredible skills.

One day after a cold day's work, Archie came briefly into my office to tell me that I may not see him the next day because he felt like he was in for a dose of 'that bone flu'.
On arriving home, he told his wife that he was feeling crook and went straight to bed. A few minutes later, she took him a cup of tea and found him sitting up in bed with his eyes open - stone dead!
We bid him farewell in an appropriate manner- for forestry people.

Salvage Logging

After the 1975 gales, there were some 200ha of salvageable sawlogs and we began discussions on how to make the most of the situation.

Laurie King asked me first, if I could put a logging crew together and secondly, what would the logging costs be to skid site.

Well that caused me a great amount of work to figure out the logging cost because at that stage were were not logging on the forest. Eventually, I came up with the price if 25 cents per square foot of log measure. Meantime Laurie had asked around for prices from sawmills and he came back to me saying that we had the logging job but we had to do it for 21 cents!

I didn't have a blindfold! There were no other crews around and there was a glut of timber available because the same storms hit most of Canterbury. As it turned out, we did log the area within budget albeit with a raw crew (at the start) and variable piece size and one of the main reasons for the success was that Bert Bennett [Bennett's Sawmilling] took all the logs and Fletchers, with Burnie McMullen as local boss took all the timber Bert produced despite there being substantial sapstain. Sapstain is a fungus that discolours timber/logs but apparently does not cause timber weakness only an aesthetic degrade.

I led my team of Mick Hill the Dozer driver, Mel Jamieson who was on the skids cutting up the logs, Doug Turner and Jim (Skippy) Wilson as bushmen. These guys were inexperienced as bushmen and I had to train them as we went along and my role as gang boss was to take responsibility for the risky jobs that inevitably crop up when logging in windthrow.

We had a Cat D6 Bulldozer and a logging arch that was actually a D7 size. This made it difficult when making tracks because the arch was wider than the D6. Mick could manage it very well but when he was away, I drove the thing and usually tipped the arch over whenever I was track making. There was a trick to righting it so the problem was not huge, just frustrating and maybe be could take the arch off when track-making but that involves time and of course there is pride!
We were given flash, secondhand Husqvana chainsaws and a bunch of logging strops. So we were fitted out fairly well.


The trouble with windthrow is that is is difficult to predict where the tension is on each tree, so where is the best/safest cut. Uprooted trees can be cut and suddenly the trunk is off the stump and the roots fall back into the hole - very quickly sometimes so you have to be quick enough to keep out of harms way.

Generally I would be the 'breaker-out' which is the guy who works out where the dozer backs up to, or is able to back up to. Then take the strops, attach them to the logs in a pattern that will pull the logs into the logging arch.
Sounds easy enough but those strops were heavy (half inch wire rope, choker and large ring to slide up the main rope) and I carried a few of them at once - 4, 5, 6 or up to 8 depending on the size of the sawlogs.
As well I had to pull out the main winch rope. Those Hyster winches are able to drive out, which makes pulling the rope easier, but Mick found that driving it out made the winch drum spin too much and the plug at the end would pop out. So I had to pull the bloody thing out thus pulling the whole weight of the rope, the not-so-freewheeling winch and the strops! No wonder nobody else wanted that job! And thinking about I must have been a tough bugger!

We worked an hour extra per day and the team gradually came together very well. Over a period of two years we never had a bad accident and while we worked hard in dangerous conditions, the relationships within the team remained strong aside from normal and expected blowout.

Phil Wilkie reminds me on a regular basis [he is now over 8o!] about the time he nearly killed me and thought he had! I was down the hill sawing a springy tree and looked up as Phil dropped a tree in my direction [he thought I was further drown the hill]. I knew I could not get out of the way because of the slash, so I ducked down among the fallen trees. These trees took to shock and I felt the tree Phil had dropped fit my helmet. But it only just hit it - I felt it clonk but did not damage to my hat or my head for that matter. Incredibly lucky!
Even some funny things happened. I doubt that I can relate this as I saw it, but it was side-splitting. Skippy missed the truck and came up on the Yamaha motorbike but he had no experience a motorcycle riding. We let him go in front of us at knockoff and got a laugh straight away. The throttle was a bit touchy and he opened it too much, so the bike took off with him holding on for grim life lying prostrate on the tank and seat. Somehow he managed to get seated [without stopping] but was going a bit swiftly and each corner of the road he lurched precariously, holding himself up by using his feet and managing to keep the bike loosely upright.
Mick was driving the truck and tears flowed down his cheeks! How Skippy managed to get to the bottom of the hill was a combination of luck and agility but once on the more stable tarseal road he shot ahead and safely returned to HQ.

The Big Storm

Just after midnight on 1st August 1975 even though I could not sleep, I was awoken by heavy rapping on the door. The guy Chettleburgh who lived temporally down by the overhead bridge wanted to tell me of the red glow at the back of the forest. It had been blowing strongly from the Northwest all night which was why I could not sleep.

Northwest winds are warm and dry, usually with humidity plummeting. Dangerous for fires!

I rang Bob Shaw who was O/C at the time, but he did not hear his phone above the sound of the wind, so I phoned Skip Wilson and asked him to raise Bob and I would meet him at my gate. Skip should keep watch and alert the troops should that be necessary.

Shortly after, and the wind was increasing in velocity all the time, Bob picked me up in the CF Bedford and we hurried into the forest. It was obvious the fire was at the back of the forest, so we headed up Breakneck Road via Rodman's Road and once on Mount Misery Road we could see that the fire was far away on Tabletop and would not endanger the forest or the South Block as we watched, a fireball jumped 500 metre to set another patch of Manuka alight.
So we were not concerned so much about the fire being a danger to the forest.

The wind was powerful and I had to exit the truck to open the gates on Mount Misery Road and the one from Breakneck Road. Stones that were the road surface were flying through the air - some as big a golf balls. As well other debris was flying! There was a full moon so it was quite light and the wind was warm.

Back on Breakneck Road I did not bother to close the gate because of the force of the wind - the truck shook like a jet breaking the sound barrier. Breakneck Road travels through pine forest and trees had begun to fall across the road and we had to either jump over them with the truck or push them out of the way. Further down the road we stopped to look at Compartment 41 as this was the first block to be production thinned after being pruned up to 11 metres. The trees were flapping around in the wind, bending over and snapping off at various heights. The cracking noise and the sound of the wind is indescribable!

We could not pass what is now the golf course [the bottom of Middle Ridge Road] because some of the big old Euc globulus trees had fallen across the road. So I opened the gate into Conna Lynn
and we travelled across the golf course area to exit below the letterboxes. Next was the area of Bill Matches' trees - now built on - so we went through the lower gate into the area that was part of the Forest Headquarters site. There was a gate right under the high tension power lines. It was then that I realised what danger we were in and had been in - the hairs at the back of my neck stood up because of the whistling of those wires and the fear of them falling down!

When Bob dropped me off at the top of our drive, I had to force myself against the wind to get down the hill! It was hard work!
Mags and the kids were in our bed and frightened because the wind roaring by now and of course they were worried about me. The house was sheltered to some extent by a macrocarpa hedge. I climbed into bed with them - there was no electricity to light my way, but the moonlight was enough.

At some stage I climbed out of bed and looked out of the window. After I got back in bed, I realised something was not quite right so I climbed out again and our garage had gone leaving my truck and car standing there in the moonlight!
Hanging on the rafters I had 100mm x 25mm possum boards, with skins stretched on them to dry - many of them I never recovered but I did find some way down by the railway bridge some 500 metres away!

In the light of day there was a lot of damage! We sent a crew into the township to clear away fallen trees from people's properties and in some cases putting on tarpaulins where roofs had been damaged. There was no other agency available at that time, so we stood up.
The storm devastated populations of birds such as blackbirds and starlings and grain silos were blown into the sea.
That day as always happens, the wind turned to cold Southwest but while storm-force, nowhere near as bad.

The damage in the forest was enormous with around 500 hectares being damaged. We were to spend a lot of time cleaning up.

Storms

Anyone working in an outdoor activity will understand that weather conditions greatly effect whatever they are doing.

Right now we are in the middle of a storm - heavy rain over a prolonged time and strongish winds.

I recall several of these events and what happened around the Herbert/Waianakarua district.
The biggest event was the 1975 gales but I will address that at another time - here I will talk about floods.

At Herbert Forest, we took meteorological readings for the Meteorological Service and at one time I did a summary to find that the driest month of the year is most reliably June and the wettest ever month was also June. To summarize all this, I can only say that the North Otago (NZ for that matter) weather is dynamic. What seems to happen is that a depression/cyclone moves South and there is an anticyclone to the east. This cause the depression to move slowly and sometimes there is rain from the NE, then a lull but as the clockwise-moving depression moves South, the SE wind bring heavy dumps of rain and the so-called Southeasterly three-day drizzle. Usually on a rising glass (barometer).

One such event occurred in late 1968. One of the markers is Grave's Dam because it takes a substantial amount of rain to cause the river to flow over it. This happens perhaps three times annually. The other marker I have is my paddock which is on a small flat right beside the river. On a few occasions a stream flows through the gate and the bottom of bank on which the top terrace sits. This leaves a small island and when this happens, I have to check stock but the island has never been submerged as far as I know.
We had cleared a large area of Diamond Hill which had been planted in 1968 and this created a exaggerated runoff locally.
The 1 metre culvert on Couch's Road was washed out (we called the creek - Couch's but Alan Dick used the name - Glenburnie. I'm not too sure what might be 'official) . This flow also swept out the culvert/wet crossing on Breakneck Road and 'cleaned out' the creek-bed which is the loose boundary between the properties owned by Dr. King and Margaret MacKay.

All the roads through the forest were designed and built by local staff, and while perhaps narrow, we kept them maintained with the water tables and culvert kept clean. In heavy rain, gravel is carried down the water table and will block culverts. This cause damage to the road surface and has to be cleaned up. This done by a little bit of spade work, or a grader or if damage to severe the hire of trucks to cart fresh gravel onto the road. Sometime a lot of money can be saved if people go out when it is raining and turn the water off the road - people don't like getting wet though!

Mick Hill the dozer driver wanted to make a wet crossing where the culvert was washed out on Couch's Road, but I thought if we protected the fill, replacing the culvert would be the best option.
Mick had to drive way down the creek-bed to retrieve the 1 metre diameter concrete pipes - well me too because I hooked a strop onto them. The pipes were carefully placed and fill pushed over them. I had a team cutting Kanuka logs and we set them protecting the fill on the upstream side. Lacing them with No.8 wire and anchoring them with fence posts and tie back.
I was really pleased with the results and it stood up to the next flood!
However another 50 year flood soon after washed it out again! Mick was not around so I took the opportunity to drive the D6 and push fill into the creek so the water force would take the fill away. This was spectacularly unsuccessful and a porridge of clay was left in the middle of the creek.
I had to wait for the creek to go down and had another go. The road was about 2 meters above the creek-bed so I had to whittle that down and make a suitable approach on each side of the creek. The problem was, where to push the spare fill to. I needed to push it uphill thus not having the advantage of gravity. Once up the road a bit. I would push it over the side of the road.
I had not done much when I became bellied on a big rock in the creek-bed. The D6 had a logging winch on the back but in this case I would have preferred rippers. By forcing rippers and blade down, it is possible to lift the machine, pack rocks under the tracks and hopefully drive off. So I was unable to do that. But I could lift the front with with the blade. This was not enough as the ground beneath was so soft - all the rocks, logs etc did not lift the machine up enough.
My next trick was to use the winch. I attached it to a young radiata tree (maybe ten years old) but it simply pulled the tree out. So I wrapped it around five trees - they all came out too.
I was about to call some workers in to dig a dead man to use as an anchor when I remembered the railway iron. The piece of railway line was just a bit longer than the width of the tractor. I laced it onto the tracks with No8 wire and moved slowly in reverse. The railway iron kicked the dozer off the rock just as the wire broke and I was free!
Without further incident I finished the wet crossing and it server well until we started logging. The Waitaki District Council was prepared to give us one exit route and that was down Middle Ridge Road, so to connect that road to the Government Hill area, Couch's road was improved with an Armco culvert. To my knowledge this remains today.

Going back some time - a long time - Jock & Jessie Anderson used to farm land that is now forest (old Nat Stevenson's house). After the flood of 1980, he told me that he and Jessie had gone to the Herbert store on horseback. On their return trip there was water flowing over the bridge. Jock's horse walked across but Jessie's spooked a bit, so he waded back -the water was ankle deep - and he led it across. I thought that was very brave - I would never have done that!

There was another serious flood in 1980 with the main damage being the pond we had built at the bottom of Swallow's Creek burst and washed water around Cliff Blaikie's new house and left a lot of debris in the bridge. Cliff was faced with packing the scoured areas with river stones.
Cleaning up the pond was difficult and Mick became stuck with the D6! It was too boggy to pack stuff under it, so Bert Bennett came with his TD6 which had a blade and logging winch. The D6 was the heavier machine and this cause Bert's tractor to slide backwards, so he dug a pit and sat the machine in it much like a dead-man. Out popped the D6. And the pond was completed.
There are more houses along Reid Road now and I wonder haw safe that pond is. I will download some pics and one shows the Swallows Creek flowing into the river.
There were a lot of slips on the unstable Herbert Hill and the [silly] MOW tipped all the clay in the center of the river at Frame's crossing. So the river gravels could not scour and this caused a change in the bed which moved the river South poor old Allan Ross lost not only his crop of turnips but also his paddock!

By far the worst episode was in 1986 a 1 metre diameter log was left on top of the bridge! I guess it would take at least half a metre of water to carry it - maybe more. The damage in the forest was as might be expected but not excessive. The river was so high it swamped the Herbert/Waianakarua water scheme pump house causing it to close down.
The intake was filled with sand and we put two men and a Wajax pump there to help clean it out. Old Alf Milligan complained that the job was taking too long, but there was no other way with the resources available to us, and it was part of a corporate responsibility. It took a long time to get the scheme going again.
The present floods are bad enough but we do need regular floods to clear the river as there are many exotic weeds growing there. Buddlea, Gorse, Lupin, Old Man's Beard to name just a few.

Kereru

The Kereru is an indigenous wood pigeon of New Zealand and while it is not rare, it is protected.

There are a few Kereru living around our property and they are very quiet (tame), drinking from birdbaths, perching on wires and feeding in tree lucerne, willow, cherry plumbs and anything that takes their fancy.

Yesterday I was removing weed species from among a (largely) indigenous shrubbery - the worst weeds being blackberry and Muehlenbeckia. Both these weeds are spread by birds and most know about blackberry and its thorny vines. Muehlenbeckia is not so well known. Bellbirds seem to like the small seed which germinates readily. The small wiry seedling grows rapidly and can actually smother some vegetation, much like old man's beard.
As I was working, perched high above me was this Kereru, looking down and seemed to be checking what I was doing. I was quite active using a chainsaw and porter pruners, pulling the vines down from the various trees. The Kereru was not in the slightest bit scared, rather it was curious and whenever I switched off the saw, it would coo at me in the way they do, nodding their heads. The sheep feeding on the other hand, on the bits I threw over the fence took flight whenever I cranked up the saw.
Then I noticed that the big bird was actually feeding on the Muehlenbeckia leaves. I have never seen this before, nor heard of it, which is why I am recording it here.

There was a posting on Youtube where some dropkick Scandinavians shot one of these beautiful birds appearing to be quite enthusiastic about what they had done. These guys were here in NZ to do some shooting and other activities but shooting a Kereru shows no skill at all! You can walk up to them - as close as 3 metres if you are quiet. And they just sit there with a big white belly to aim at.

There is no doubt that Kereru are tasty, I have been a forester for a long time and they were tradition fare of Maori in the past. I find dead ones from time to time because they fly fast and do bump into things viz. out windows. I've never eaten one and the Otago Museum do not want any more examples, so I just give them the dignity of a burial.