Day 173 - Sorell. For all of you who drink beer and I know there are a few, to the left is a picture of a hops crop. As you
know hops are a vital ingredient of beer, so for your edification I went to some trouble to take this photo. Its
great the way they string them up on the strings isn't it.
I went for a trip to Port Arthur as you do when you are in Tasmania, to get there you need to travel through Dunailly. Dunailly
was the town where fire destroyed a lot of homes recently, its a very sobering experience driving through the town
and seeing the damage that was done. Having seen the devestation I didn't think I could live with myself without
doing something, so I went to Blaze Aid and voluntered my services foe a few days. Blaze Aid provide volunteer labour
for repairing border fences that have been destroyed by fires, floods etc, they usually have a camp near the latest
disaster. I know nothing about fences but I have certainly learnt a fair bit in the last few days. Today I am having
an enforced rest day as I have buggered my foot somehow, hopefully it will be ok tomorrow.
The red bridge at Campell Town.
The main street of Campbell Town as seen from the Red Bridge.
The Welseyan Church at Ross.
A Stone bridge at Ross, built in 1836.
Wayne tying wire onto pickets. This was my first day, it is a very simple job there are five wires that have that have
to be attached to each picket, even I was able to become reasonably proficient in a small period of time. 4 of us were
able to do about a kilometre of fence in less than a day. You can see the X-Trial as a small white dot above the
third post. A little trap for beginners is that you work away for a few hours until lunch, then walk back to the car
and eat lunch, when lunch is finished you walk to were you stopped and start again, then 5 minutes later you run out
of ties and have to repeat the trip to the car for a resupply. As you probably all guessed it is easy to get
your wires crossed, meaning you have to undo your the stuffed up bit and redo do it.
My second day was spent removing a burnt out fence so that a new one could be built to replace it. The picture shows where we have removed the fence, you can sort of see a line of burnt posts that will have to be removed with a tractor. As the fence we were removing was quite old, there were trees growing up through it, next to it etc, thus there is a couple blokes following the fence removers, dropping (thats the correct technical term apparently) any trees that are in the way or might fall on the new fence. If you enlarge the photo you will see a pile of burnt out "droppers", notice also the trees that have been dropped have also been cut into lengths for firewood were the tree was large enough, all those stumps of the dropped tree will need to be removed before the fence can be rebuilt.
