THE FENCER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4530, 27 September 1875, Page 7

THE FENCER.

(By Old Chum in the Queenslander.)

" Five bob a rod. Thin s has come to a pretty pass, when a feller's only offered five bob a rod for a three-rail fence, slip panels included !"

Thus spoke old Bob, the veteran fencer of the district in which my penates were established. He was a queer fellow, this old Bob. I believe lie was originally a confine during her Majesty's pleasure ; in other words, he was strongly suspected of being a "lag." However that may be, he was the- prince of fencers. He could use the mortisiug-axe as well as a carpenter the rnortising-chisel. He trimmed the ends of his rails as if he divined by intuition the necessary amount of wood to chip off or leave on. His posts were always upright, and no matter how long the line of fence, they were always exactly the same height out of the ground, and in a perfectlystraight line. His corner and gate posts were marvels of solidity. He used to say regularly on ramming a gate-post, "There, if that's knocked over I'll forgive the dray that did it." I had many conversations with this old fellow, and gleaned many particulars of his craft. Splitting and fencing, he informed me, generally went together. It was not usual for a fencer to do any other kind of splitting. You see we all has our particler work. We doesn't interfere much with one another. Many a tree as'll knock out five hundred or a thousand shingles aint o' much use for rails, and I takes a good many trees as'll run rails but ain't no mortal good for shingles. I doesn't mind a bit of a wind in a tree, because I can mostly take out the wind in dressin' the rails ; but it don't I do to have a wind in a shingle. So it often happens if I ain working close alongside a a shingle-getter, that we swops logs. Mine suits him, and his don't harm me. Logs with a bit of a pipe in suits me best. They ain't so hard to burst. Them as get 3 timber for sawmills doesn't want no pipy logs, so we gets many a good stick out of them ; likewise them from us. I onst got a log as a party of timbergetters left, and I knocked two hundred postesses out of it. I used to do all my own mortising, but it don't pay now. Timber's so scarce, one has to spend a long time looking for one as 'll run. I gets men to mortise at two-pence-halfpenny a post, and that leaves me free to go prospectin' for trees. How do I know a tree as'll run well? No, I don't take no chips out. That's done by fellows as isn't up to their work. They chops out a big junk of the sap-wood, and they splits it. Of course it splits easy. "Oh ! that'll run like a match," says they, and down comes their tree, and they spends half a day tryin' to enter a wedge, and if it does enter they hammers it home, and the log don't budge, and they outs their wedge out with the axe and goes to another. The sap aint nothin' to go by. I've got many a score rails out of trees them fellows has passed. I judges by the bark. When it runs straight in long even furrows, and don't look interlocked, I says to' myself it'll do, and I always looks out to see if there's a hollow limb in the head. That's a sign of pipe, and I takes the tree and seldom make 3 a mistake. Big knots don't matter. They always stops on the outside slab. Some people likes knots in their fence. What timber doe 3 I like best 1 Why flooded gum and ironbark is my fancy. Ironbark is bad to mortise and drees if it's left too long. Bloodwood makes the best postes, and it's like butter to mortise. Takes a long time to punch the holes ? Not a bit of it. A good man will do sixty or eighty three-rail postesses a day, and thirty panel is good puttin' up, with one to dig the holes and another to dress and ram. But that .all depends on the ground. I was awful sold oust. I took a mile of fencin' to put up, and I went and looked at the ground, and J tried twp or three holes in different places, and it was all fust- ; rate sinkin', so I takes it at six bob a rod for a two-rail with gates and sliprails. Me and my mate set to work and gets on fine for about a dozen rod, and then all of a sudden we come to hard rock 6in. down. We thought it would only be a hole or two, but it kept on, and we had altogether over a quarter of a mile of pounding two-foot holes in solid rock, and when we'd doun the boss docked a shillin' a rod because the fence war'nt as solid as if it was stiff clay. We was a long time pullin' up that. Yes, I have lost stuff in bush fires, but I'se generally too smart for the fire. I onst lost a whole stockyard as was all ready to be put up, and now I always burns the grass round a heap of stuff. Fencing don't pay now as it used to do. In old times timber was plenty. No need to hump the tools about half-a-day to find a tree. They was thick as bees. And fencers was scarce. Why, five shilling's a rod for a three-rail aint no more nor I used to get for a tw'o-rail in the old times. Howsumdever as it's you, and I've done pretty well on this here ran, I don't mind sayin' as I'll take the job, but I won't take no dog-legs. I leaves them to the new chums. I doesn't mind a wire fence, seeing as it is all straight-on-end splitting, but I doesn't put up no wire fences with round stuff. That's new chum's work, too.