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Fernglade Farm

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Commenced:	01/01/2005
Submitted:	08/04/2011
Last updated:	16/02/2016
Location:	Cherokee, Victoria, AU
Climate zone:	Cool Temperate

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Fernglade Farm

Cherokee, AU

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History revealed

Project: Fernglade Farm

Posted by Chris McLeod about 10 years ago

Rusty chains, bushfire sprinklers and all about the Echium plant!

Every now and then the soil releases another strange artefact to show that I’m just another in a long line of humans that have been traversing this land for many millennia.

The other day I tripped over a strange old rusted heavy duty chain. The chain was in the middle of the path between the house and the chicken enclosure. I’d been walking that path for years and had never spotted it before, let alone tripped over it, and yet there was the chain poking up out of the ground. The soil had clearly decided that it was about time to eject this rusty old bit of iron.

Rusty chain - a remnant of the old timber milling days

The chain was only a few links long. I don’t know much about such things, but the force required to break those chain links would have been reasonably huge.
The chain was a reminder of the days when the area was extensively logged and the mountains were riddled with old timber tramways, timber mills, rough timber huts, even rougher grog than mead and bullock tracks. The chain itself was probably used by bullock teams to drag a saw log to the nearest tramway or timber mill for processing into sawn timber. Then the chain must have broken…

Most of the re-usable materials relating to the timber milling have long since disappeared from the mountain range (even the saw dust mounds near the mill areas have since disappeared), but every now and then, you can stumble across rusting old cables (used for winches I guess) and other mysterious bits of rusted machinery. All these items tell a story about the history of the area. It also serves as a reminder to just how quickly this particular forest can regrow.

The excavations continued again this week and there is probably only a couple more hours of work before the construction of the first shed can commence.
It is very exciting that the first stage of the excavating is nearing an end point because the temperature on Sunday reached just shy of 30 degrees Celsius (86’F) in the shade. By about 3pm that afternoon, I really had to call it quits. Heat exhaustion can be a serious problem during long hot afternoon’s here and it is not even summer yet!

For the rest of the entry: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/

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