Ambitions of Lumberjackery - Night 15

Today we began work on the much larger trail connecting the Dragonweyr Reserve to its sister reserve to the south, owned by Adrian’s daughter and son-in-law, Jane and John. Trail work on this track would be much easier as stepping, woo-boys and granite are not required; a simple raking along with tree and stone removal would suffice. Daniel and I were tasked with large tree removal. Manning an ax and a saw we forged ahead of the group, sawing and hacking our way down the track. The rain last night had not helped our cutting efforts, as the wet wood tended to swell around the saw, constantly pinching us off. Nevertheless, by break we had progressed about 80% of the way down the track and returned to help the others with raking.

We knocked off work around 2pm, having nearly completed one half of the track (though some minor rock removal remains). Somehow, this job needs to last us through next week, so I imagine our days will only be getting shorter in order to properly pace ourselves. To pass some time, we made another journey into Stanthorpe in the afternoon. I was in search of a new book to read and a slingshot, neither of which were found. After returning to Dragonweyr, Matt and I went on a small bush walk, following the granite ridge in hopes of finding a high point for some nice view of the Main Range to the east. Loosely following some marked trails and partially forging our own, we located a few decent vistas, but nothing to take your breath away. On the bright side, I did come across a few great thinking rocks, large circular stones that appear entirely out of place in this landscape, as if they were dropped from the sky. It reminded me a bit of the Texas Canyon area in the Chiricahuas east of Tucson.

A delicious dinner of deviled sausages, steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes with garlic in our bellies, we retired to the porch for a game of eight-man British Shithead. This game has become quite popular in camp and doesn’t require a whole lot of skill. About nine o’clock the wind picked up and the storm that the forecaster had predicted for yesterday finally arrived tonight. Though being in a metal shed likely overestimated the true fury of the rain, it flat out came down, like it can only come down in a desert environment. Massive lighting strikes and flash flooding, a storm straight out of the Sonoran Desert. After about an hour of listening to it pound the roof and the ground, during a small respite, we made the mad dash to the tent and luckily found it nearly bone dry in our sleeping quarters. The roof had held, but the floor leaked in a bit of water from the rushing flash flooding on the ground. We were sleeping on two inch thick pads, so the bit of floor moisture wasn’t be a problem.

What I Learned Today: Food and manufactured goods are more expensive here in Australia than they are comparatively in the United States. This, however, is not a bad thing. A big portion of the reason is that the people employed in fruit picking, farming, and general labor and manufacturing jobs are paid better than they are in the US. Migrant farm workers –many of whom are foreign backpackers like me -- are paid between $15 and $20 an hour to pick peaches. To be a Marxist for a moment, capital exploits labor to much lesser extent in Australia. It appears as if the people here (simple farmers and small business owners) understand community level, demand side economics (now if only we could get our high and mighty Republican politicians to understand the same elementary concepts). I imagine this is an insight perhaps gained in part by their isolation both internationally and intranationally or maybe by the fact that the government does much less here to subsidize the cost of transportation (fuel) than we do in the States.

written by  exumenius on October 25, 2007 from Stanthorpe, Australia
from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos
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