Blood, Sweat and Iron Bark

 Moving Blood Wood logs isn’t too difficult  but Iron Bark lives up to its name and weighs so heavy that even small slices require superhuman effort. It puts the efforts of the early settlers, with no mechanical tools into perspective and its certainly not a job to do during the sizzling day.  
Here are Russell and fellow Workawayer, Greta from Germany, pulling out some of the trees Russell felled in the evening. Previously to this I cut out all the scrub, hand weeded the area to remove non-native weeds and moved a lot of rock and stones (Whew!) so that eventually the sparse areas of Native Kangaroo grass (Temeda triandra) will spread and a mower/strimmer can be run over them. This is to create a fire break around the house. Keeping on top of a fire break around a property is hard, especially if, like Russell and Rachel, you want to encourage native grasses rather than importing quick growing sward.

 

According to Russell the wild fires here are never as devastating as those in Victoria and New South Wales. It seems that despite the parched winters the trees are better fire-proofed here and the atmosphere does not explode with volatile oils. It is rather the understory of grass and scrubby bushes that blazes up; but this does not stop them spreading easily into property and burning houses as they go. Russell tells of a time a few years back when a fire jumped across the mountain and was burning up to his neighbour’s house. Everyone was at work so he fought it alone, even rolling on the ground to put it out.