EARLY TYPE OF FENCE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29458, 9 March 1961, Page 21

EARLY TYPE OF FENCE

On-The-Spot Materials

To fence in his stock on the treeless plains, the early Malvern settler used a sharp spade and a lot of backbreaking energy. The first permanent fences in the county were made by cutting square sods from the ground and piling them up in two lines with loose dirt in between about four or five sods high. Along the top in the soil the settler then sowed gorse seed, which at that time was a minor but important commodity of the seed merchants and fetched about 10s a pound. If he already had a gorse fence he carefully transplanted the seedlings which had come up beneath the fence.

The ditch which was made by digging out the sods for the fence became a natural drain and equally as good, providing the fall was right, for a minor stock water race. The water ran down on one side of the fence and to water the stock in the paddock on the other side a hole was cut through the sods and the race diverted for a few yards through a ditch on the other side and was then led back through another hole to join up with the original ditch. The gorse fences had to be kept in good order or the branches grew out and gnarled roots projected, but one of the neatest sights in Canterbury is still the squarecut green sides of trimmed gorse fences in the autumn and early winter.