THE SAWMILL SLABBY, AND OTHERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 11

THE SAWMILL SLABBY, AND OTHERS.

Br R. W. R. Once, during a period of stress^ I filled the position of sawngll "slabby." t To <&"yYiwelters-^fld;-^per4§«is who huve|s|>e£h]t t&eh lives ~,s}a& %jh_e hvide. winif^yepJi plateaus of our JJdfniaion, and who* know "the bush only as. the resort of picnic parties, a sawmill slabby may mean anything. Know then, -ye uninitiated, that a slaoby at a .sawmill ie relatively in the same position as a rouseabout in a woolsbed or a boy on board ship. His privilege it is to be at the beck and call of everybody, to provide a subject fox the witticisms of the more facetious mill hands, and to be a scapegoat generally. He does the hardest work, gets the smallest pay, and is quite frequently the happiest man in the mill. The particular establishment at which I for a time earned my " six bob a day " was situated in a remote corner of a Southland foiest, and was a somewhat thirdrate affair. Its complement of hands comprised the bass, who prowled about at will and did odd jobs, tine head sawyer and the tail sawyer, the man (I forget his official designation) who classed and stacked the timber, the engine-driver^ the trolJy-man, the " bullocky,' the two bushmen, and myself — the slabby. 'Most of us lived in the half-dozen rough huts on the hillside just above the mill. A couple of the hands were mairiod men, who had their wives and families in slightly bigger huts placed in convenient openings about ♦lie uash. These men kept one or two cows, which provided most of us with milk, and which subsisted precariously on '.'gummies^' (th§. foliage of the gum-leaf tree). We were not, on the whole, an unhappy • community, though so isolated as to^be deprived of all of those things tha£ in more populous centres make lite a sweet and joyous thing. The men were good, honest fellows; they were ioi\gh and breezy and boisterous, perhaps, and their speech more often than not was inclined to coarseness. Still, they were not tainted by the evil-living and debased minds which so frequently characterise workmen who have come from or live near the cities and towns. But they never laughed. The ,bc*s was a sour Highlander, and his bristling ginger whiskers hid the face of a bitterly disappointed man. They told me at the mill that my predecessor had been a good workman, but his collection of funny stories irritated the boss, and one day, when the latter caught him making the tail sawyer chuckle, he had been summarily "sacked." With one exception .they were elderly men, who smiled only 6n rare . occasions: Once was when a Jplank, in which I- had entire trust, broke suddenly and precipitated me intd a particularly dirty creek. As I crawled out, very wet and miserable, I saw just 'a suspicion of a grin ou one or two faces. The exception to the Yule of elderly men was -the young engine-driver. And a wild, consuming passion, it seemed to me, made his life wretched. He had a small, shaggy •ipony, and on fine nights and every Sunday he would scrub- the engine grease and miro gum off his hands and ride away to "a lone bush farm, .where was a browneyed girl. I shared a hut with him, and I believe, if anxiety about his love affair had not occupied -all his waking 'moments, he would have been companionable enough. He is now thoroughly and satisfactorily married. We worked six days a week, ar.d it was quite the most strenuous toil I have ever known. I had to keep the saws clear, and wheel the sawdust away in a huge barrow. I had to see that the tank, from which a stream of water played continually on the saws and kept them cool, was always more or less full. I had to supply the engine-driver with wood for his boiler. I had to assist the trolly-man to roll his logs from the trolly on to the " bank," and I had to help the tail sawyer to roll them again from the " bank " on to the "breaking-down bench,' where they were reduced by an enormous saw to negotiable size, and rolled over to the head sawyer, who, vith a smaller and more delicately adjusted saw, produced the timber. My principal duly was to deal with the "slabs" — i.e., "the waste portion of each log. Part of this was that which carried the bark, and this I "lugged" to a slab heap some yards away. Another part was made up of very rough planks, which were disposed of at peppercorn prices to be utilised in building sl>eds, etc. Yet another portion comprised material called second-class, which was in some demand by men who wishe-l to do certain kinds of lough building. The timber proper was taken away by the man who measured and classed it. Each of these products of the log was consigned to a different heap, and to keep the saws clear and get through by 5 o'clock I had to move at a rapid trot. I was generally referred to as a "lazy young skunk." After tea I was usually too tired to do more than lie flat and read some of the Deadwood Dick or Nat Gould books that liberally bestrewed the huts. If George (the engine-driver) had not ridden off to bee the bi own-eyed gin, he would bring out his " fiddle,"' and produce therefrom merry or dolorous strains^ which always, however, seemed to ad<s greatly to the melancholy of the att*embled company. The men whose work I thought the most to be envied were the bushmen. They were huge, brawny fellows, who could hew down a pine tree in about the same time that it takes a respectable city man to split a log from the domestic wood heap. Their days were spent away .out in the virgin bush, wheie the only sounds <to be heard beyond the ring ot their axes and the harsh swieh of their bright steel crosscut saw were the soft coo; of the native pjg^on, the squawk of an occasional kaka parrot, and the hearty curses' wherewith " Bullocky Bfll " encouraged lite . team of • skinny -boyine*. The bushmen .-were. armed with; jmkwv axe«, And. elfiaher. •With the latter' instrument • they <xtt trade* through the undergrowth from on«

-. suitable*. tt-ae- to » another, .jiEjdVtheg ■ ffiade

a small clearing in" the "panrticulaT direction ["i

they wished the tree to fall. While one - w-as., doing, Jthis .the, other "was "jscferiing " "'the -tree— m" other- 'words,' he" wa^.chop-

ping a sharp V-shaped incision on the

side of the tree nearest the clearing. Then ihe two men took the say between, them, -.and made aydeep. cut* jnt4| tb^P&ee ""im the iotopofflt€^sij£%to, and than, t&e soar£ A§ the saw* ate its' way rapidJy into the big trunk, the men 'drove a. thin steel wedge in behind it, as a sort ofgentle hint to the forest monarch that it was desired that it should fall in a' certain direction. "Swish-swish, swish*!

swish" came from the saw, and the dua^j flew from the " cut " like a little showei"-L-of highly coloured oatmeal.. Only a couple»p of inches of wood remained and thefc

tree swiayed gently, but still clung tena- ♦ ciously to its upright 1 position. >■ It was a, | dead calm, yet there was a gentle stir-^ £! Ting among the branches, as if .this, veteran 'jj pine were, sighing softly for the ' tree-life 3j so ruthlessly cut short. " Look out ! She's §1 going," <and the men. pnjled? ojSt? theii? ''' $ saw and wedge and stepped back: Slowly . the tree cants over, . and then commences . ■ to fall, quickly, and ."more quickly. . There's a rush of air through its branches, a sharp pause, and a sudden reverberating roar. A few startled birds fly wildly about, and a cloud of dust -arises, and the bush-

men proceed to lop_ away the lower branches. We may think that we have se"en a . little tragedy — that we have witnessed a fine old tree torn pitilssly from the forest it has graced -fdr '*. hundred years, - and» thrown down, wrecked and crippled, among the .weeds and parasitesthat once grew humbly at its foot; but the bushmen^ only compliment themselves, on the accuracy o( the fall. They" do tins thing two score times a. week. >uf. while thus we meditate, two ..keen axes ha-ve cleared away tlie lower boughs, and a hurrying saw has cut through the ' trunk, thirty or forty feet from 1 the' stump. The two bushmen, with scarcely a word, have shouldered their tools, and j strode away through the scrub and fern •to the next big xed pine. There is a talj bokaka, and here a fine, straight native birch, but the axeman pass them by : there is no demand for such timbers in InvercargUT and Dunedin, to which towns the little steamier, calling once . a month j at the adjacent port, takes the product of their toil. They:, will always turn aside for & totara,. and a white pine, and they

will take black pine and miro if-these are obtainable in. convenient positions,' but their • main purpose is to ' secure red pine. And red /pine is common to most of the.

Southland forests. Presently, '■' Bullocky Bill's "profane tones and the crack of his long whip, disturb the stillness,- and the patient bullocks, yoked together two' and two, come slowly along the Tough narrow track. Bill lets his team stand about the little clearing, and proceeds to drive a "dog." (a huge needle-like thing) into the end of the log. Through , the eye of this he puts - the hook attached, to the end of an enormous chain, which is then run through the " heel " • and attached to the bullocks'

yoke-bands. Then his ' talk, always original arid' refreshing, breaks' out afresh, the whip cracks, 'the team strains 'and groans and stumbles, and the log begins slowly to move. As -it does go, the " heel," which is something like a toboggan, with the upright part attached to the chain, slips under the end, and it is thereby enabled to negotiate ruts and projecting roots without unduly taxing | the bullocks. The log is - thus towed to the loading bank, where it is left lying across two raised logs that are fixed at 'right angles to the tramway. Here it is taken in charge by " Jimmy ? " the trolleyman, and conveyed to the mill. -Jimmy was a fat, taciturn little Scotchi man, who loved the solitude of the bush, and the comfort of his little black pipe. I never quite fathomed Jimmy. On the rare "occasions on which he spoke, beyond saying shocking things to the tired old trolley horse, we discovered that his accent was so rich as to make him almost unintelligible. He never drank, never read, never talked— just smoked and meditated. On the one occasion on which I attempted to break through his reserve and start a conversation, I was met with such a flow of profanity that the experiment was not repeated. I am still firmly convinced that Jimmy had a story, for there was something suggesting mystery about the man; but it will never be kno\w.. I noticed in the files of a country paper recently that Jimmy had died suddenly — the result of heart" failure, it said. His grave will add another to the list of graves of men with "pasts" — of which few young countries hold more than does X-pw Zealand. The site of that old mill is now, I ; believe, deserted, and mokimoki and briars have grown over Uie tramway line and the bullock tracks. There is still an enormous quantity of timber on the back ranges of that district, but it is so far back, and the expenss of ' bringing it out arid despatching it to the markets is so great, that it will remain there until a paternal Government builds there a railway, — and !

that will be many a long year hence. All about that district are other sites of mills which once flourished and made

more}-, but which closed up when the areas were worked out. Yet they 'hnve only scratched at the edge of a magnificent forest of timber.

What "is vaguely termed " a voice " frequently provides '- the"'" one piece of humour in a long evening of steady talk. The other evening, at P-hiUipstown School (says the Lyttelton Times) .a man, who .was engaged in, a strenuous .speech, stated that \ in 15 years he had n.eyer bey*./ defeated in a school election. "Cheer up! you will "next • time !'! "put in "'. " the voice/, , and. even the recipient of "the •drlce bad to •mil*.