Champion fencer at work

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 15

Champion fencer at work

A Banks Peninsula fencing contractor, Mr R. J. Calder, who won the first South Island fencing championship at the Methven show last Saturday is seen at work this week in the fog at 2400 ft on the site for a new television translator between the top of Pigeon Bay and Little Akaloa.

Mr Calder, who says he has been fencing all of his life—some 16 years—came first at Methven out of five competitors and part of his prize is free air travel to the National Field Days at Hamilton in June to take part in the national fencing contest Although now in his fifth year of contract fencing on the Peninsula, which he says would be as hard going for fencing as anywhere except back in the Alps, he found the Methven competition hard work because the paddock they were working in at the eastern end of the showgrounds comprises clay, shingle and big rocks. “Conditions were ,as hard as you could get” he commented. To make post holes he added that it was “all crowbar work” and the most the crowbar would go in was three quarters of an inch. And as well it was hot with no wind. Mr Calder said that he understood that he took three hours and 54 minutes to put up the three chains of fence—this was not the fastest but he came up to the top on his Workmanship.

Mr Calder is. however, keen about such contests and, is interested in seeing the standard of fencing raised and a uniform standard of work achieved, although naturally customers require various . types of work. Bom in Gisborne, where he learnt about fencing from farmers and other contract fencers, Mr Calder says he has been fencing all of his life apart from shepherding and managing farms and also shearing. He came to the Peninsula from Gisborne about six years ago and at first was a farm manager. Now he works most of the year at fencing, except in the height of winter, depending on the

weather, but he can sometimes work through to May or June. There is good money in it in the summer, he says, but it also involves long hours of work perhaps from shortly after 5 a.m. to about 8.15 p.m. in the height of the season. One winter when fencing finished he put in some time on opossums to very good advantage. Now he says that most of the easy fencing on the peninsula is finished and his work is mostly on the tops and 80 per cent of the work now requires use of gelignite to blow the post holes. One of the remotest areas he has worked in was on the Chorlton ridge' at about 2000 ft, which is just over from where he was working this week. He said he. used 400 sticks of gelignite there in putting up 45 chains of fence. On the rocky site where he was working this week he expects to use 200 sticks in the course of erecting 25 chains of fence comprising four posts to the chain with five battens in between and six plain wires and two barbed wires.

A married man he lives at Little River and likes to go home if he can, but on major jobs he camps in a caravan on the site. When he first started fencing on the peninsula he camped in a tent and in a high wind on the Chorlton ridge he recalls having his tent tied down to his bed to keep it from blowing away and on another occasion he awoke to having 2ft of snow on his “nose.”

He normally works by himself and finds a transistor radio good company, particularly when there is football on. Mr K. Brown, a Peninsula farmer who sometimes gives Mr Calder a hand, says that one of the strong points about Mr Calder’s work is his ability to adapt himself to varying conditions from the sands of Le Bons to the roqk at the top of Okains, mud,at Lake Forsyth and shingle at Birdlings Flat. Mr Calder says it is not worth trying to train anyone to work with him when almost immediately they wanted to move on again. Mr Calder is also a shearer but he says that the two jobs do not mix very well and he now prefers to stick to fencing. He says that it is hard getting the hands accustomed to fencing again after they have softened up with shearing and he says that different muscles are used on the two jobs. He has attended a shearing school conducted by Godfrey Bowen and has shorn 209 sheep in. an eight-hour day with machines. He is also interested in dog trials and has his sights set on trying his hand at a New Zealand championships.