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.

Amazing Starling

Starlings are common in New Zealand and they are far from 'adorable'. They were introduced, I think, from Britain and while farmers find them to be useful in the control of grass grub - generally they are perceived as pests.

Mostly, they are messy and persistent nest-builders, finding all sorts of places to nest - even blocking chimneys. They carry nesting material and drop it all over the place, and even if you remove it, they will replace it.

Then they crap all over the place. Tractors in sheds are a common target but they make a mess where there is room for them to roost.
Gregarious when not nesting, they mob together in trees to roost making a gaggling noise that becomes tiresome if it is near your house.

But I want to tell about a pair of Starlings that built a nest in my tractor. Under the cowling, on top of the radiator. Now I don't use the tractor for major agricultural work, just as a work bench around the nursery. But I move it around a lot.

Well the eggs hatched and I was tempted to toss the small, wiggling, open, yellow-edged mouths out. But then I thought, ' you have to admire this tenacity'. The parents follow the tractor around and feed their infants as I work. They are cautious of me of course and wait their chance to slip under the cowling.

Makes you think though - nature will always win in the end!

Possums

The Brushtail Possum was introduced to New Zealand from Australia to provide and industry based on skins. Well with no natural peditors, the possum thived and has become a pest by eating [decimating] indigenous flora and eating eggs of indigenous birds, and very young birds.
Although they are a very clean animal, they carry TB, which is a threat to New Zealand's agricultural industry.

To date 1080 poison has been the most preferred method of control by the authorities but the use of the poison is controversial and has recieved widespread protest.
I probably do have an opinion and I did have certification to use the poison. The most important property of 1080 is that it leaches very readily in water becoming ineffective.
The green colour is supposed to deter birds from consuming the bait but clearly some birds do eat it. If dogs ingest 1080, it is a terrible death for them. But 1080 does do a good job on possums and they usually have just one offspring per annum (with one on the way), birds are able to produce several.
Just between us though, much of the opposition to 1080 is with vested interest - many are hunters. Hunting deer and perhaps pigs, thar, chamois is their passtime and for the poison is effective on those animals too.

But I'm not debating 1080, I liked to hunt possums for their pelts.

I used to hunt possums as a winter/spring activity and to make a few dollars. Never a fortune, but I did by our first colour TV set from the proceeds of possum hunting.

Possum hunting is hard work, but it is also interesting if you love the bush and take an interest in your surroundings - and, every dead possum is of some help to the indigenous forest.
You cover some difficult terrain and your hands hurt after skinning 20 or 30 possums - and that is an easy day.
Where possums were plentiful, I used cyanide poison with a lure of flour laces with aniseed and other concoctions from peanut oil to oil of roses. In some instances the possum was killed by smelling the poison - dying almost instantly. There may be five of so possums at one bait! On one line, maybe you lay 100 baits.
I remember a time when Matheson laid baits around a paddock of turnips - there was a truckload of possums for them to skin. There is no need to skin them straight away - sometimes I would set the line one weekend and pick up the possums the next.

Sooner or later the possums become bait shy and I had to resort to trapping using the dreaded 'Gin' trap. So then need there was to set the trap (I hope everyone knows that possums are nocturnal) and collect them the next morning - as early as possible. Gin traps usually hold the possum by a leg - sometimes the possum struggles and the bone is broken. The animal goes into shock and is usually asleep when I arrive at the trap.
Now the animal has to be killed. Some may shoot it, some bash their skulls in with a blunt instrument. My method was to stun the animal with a hit on the head using a heavy stick, then severing the jugular vein. I carried string with me and tied the animal to a tree branch - by a hind leg. The skin cannot be taken while the animal is warm because it will rip, the skinning was the next day. Seldom, the jugular was not severed and I would find the possum still alive sitting on top of the branch!

Skinning the animal could be tough work - especially the big red bucks! Late in the day, if I found one of those - I would throw it away to save my hands! Basically I would start by opening the skin across the front legs and 'punching down inside to remove the skin from the chest muscles.
Then across the inside of the rear legs and usually punching out the area just above the tail to make room for my boot to fit through. Then I could stand there and pull the skin from the hind legs, right off like a sock and keep pulling to tear it off around the face. You need big, strong hands to take the tail skin off - two fingers each side of the base of the tail and pull upwards. I had my own way using a piece of chainsaw starter cord and making a loop to fit around the base of the tail and pull much easier.
40,50 or more skins in a pack - I used a sugar bag - are heavy after a while.

There were always losses - other guys would discover your line, or a pig would follow it eating as many possums as it took to fill him.

I had my possum hut where I stretched and dried the skins. I stretched them on to specially cut 4 x1 timber [metrics 100 x 25] with a staple in the top to hook into a nail set in the rafters.
First you need to turn the tail inside out, so cut the very tip off and poke a length of no.8 wire through [deftly] and this does the job. Then turn the rest of the skin inside out and slip it over the board. on the thin edge at the top you tack the top of the skull and at the bottom, the underneath part of the tail. Turn the board around and tack the legs to join. Just leave the tail hanging. On the flat of the board tack the face parts.

Now you need to take off any meat or fat without cutting the pelt. This is why you do the punching when skinning - the better the job, the less meat/fat there is to remove. Mice and maggots can do some cleaning but they don't quite know when to stop.

Once the pelt is dry - - say 3 weeks, remove the tacks and with a sharp knife cut from top to bottom the leg joints and belly - this opens the skin. Then the tail - there is a dark line where the possums prehensile tail grips things, there is not hair there. You cut straight down there and you have a pelt.

I used to brush them and clean them up, but doing that did not increase the price by even one cent!

The price depends on colour, but there are black patches on the pelt. This is damaged fur regenerating. White skin = high price, black skin = zilch. So the amount of black denotes the grade.

The possums at Herbert Forest had generally lower grade skins which I put down to the gorse - but maybe that is wrong, maybe it was warmer in the forest.

I used to travel down to Green Island to meet with Fred Barclay to sell my possums. Selling the skins is a ritual and the grading is watched carefully. And without exception you were happy with the price until you met with contemporaries who always inflated the price they were given.
Old Fred was pretty straight as were the other buyers.

Many dodged the taxman by stating their name as the Prime Minister. or some important figure. Some saved a lot of money that way, but I had the feeling of Mr Taxman looking over my shoulder, so did not succumb to the temptation.

I guess if I tallied up, I would not have made money, but it was a pastime, and a way of spending those dark, winter nights profitably. It gave me cash that I would not otherwise have had.

And of course there were those adventures. My first born decided he would like to try possum hunting, so I took him to my trapline. I held the first possum by the tail while he had the hefty stick to crack it on the head. I received the crack on my head! So the novelty wore off quickly for him. Oh, don't worry about my head - hasn't cracked in many a year.

Dorothy the Grader

This is Dorothy the Gallion grader. Old Bert used to driver her and capably at that. It was a small, light grader powered by an International engine the same as a TD9.

Dorothy was named after Gib Green's daughter - mainly just for fun.

Large rocks in the road would cause Bert trouble and he would talk me into operating the rock drill. This was a crowbar with a cold chisel tip on it.

One would hold the drill and the other would hit with a heavy hammer - after each hit, the drill was turned a quarter of a turn. When there was enough rock dust in the hole created, a few drops of water went in and the wet dust, now mud was fished out with a 'spoon' made out of the flattened end of a piece of No.8 wire.
When the hole was big enough, half a plug of Gelignite was stuffed down there and a detonator/safety fuse attached and lit. Boom the rock was no more.

A box of detonators was perhaps 100mm x 100mm and about 60mm high. This one box used to arrive at the Otepopo railway shed in a wagon all by itself. I used to laugh at that.
More than once though when we were forming a road through rock, we would blow up to two cases of explosives and join them with cortex so it would go off with one detonator.
I had a tooth removed which made crimping the safety fuse to the detonator easier. The gap was just the right size!
We used the yellow safety fuse and lit it on a box of matches by paring half of the end away to expose more powder to the flame. Never ran, always walked and whenever Bert was there, he would always light his pipe half way away from the lighted fuse to show how calm he was.