Brass Monkey? aah, not quite...

As it turned out, we were a vehicle short for a full “Brass monkey” which the way the forecast was heading was not such a bad thing. But then Saturday turned out to be one of those brilliant Northland winterless days, and Brett and Syd just couldn’t sit around with their vehicles loaded and nowhere to go.
So they headed north to Mike’s place so they could take their vehicles off the trailers, wander along the tracks and give Syd’s chainsaw a bit of a workout. Apparently it was near on dark when they got their vehicles back to the trailers and loaded up for home. Sunday saw the vehicle count up to three, the chainsaw count to two, and the monkey count now four, with Colin & Nat joining in Syd and Brett’s game of ti-tree bashing…

Not much time spent in the vehicles, and not alot of distance travelled; Syd and Colin with the chainsaws that invariably ran out of fuel or slipped a chain – always just in time for a coffee break or in time to move the vehicles up 100 metres or so – and Brett and Nat cleaning up behind, shifting the entanglement of ti-tree from the middle of the track to somewhere that should resemble the side of the track for the next few months or six until we get back in there to have another go. Fairly monotonous work, apart from the odd time Colin got himself tangled up in his own cutting path and ended up felling the matchstick forest onto his head (laughing quality only, no harm done here).

There was a bit of diffidence – caution even – about whether we should go down the hill we were clearing due to the steepness of it and the reality that we’d have to get back up it to head out for home. But after a relaxing lunch the optimism took over and all three vehicles tottered on down and along the track a bit more until the trees got closer together and harder to bash with the vehicles and more frustrating to move by hand. So Colin took the land rover for a real good BASH! At first the trees moved reasonably well, but then they all ganged up on the old land rover and wouldn’t move much at all. Colin took ages to turn around, bouncing both bumpers off the stick forest, but finally he got there and parked up on the track headed the right way. Nat spotted a washer amongst the debris on the track; it turned out to be a shock washer off the landy. Then Colin checked under the bonnet and pulled off a slightly stretched power steering belt; after a couple of attempts at a make-shift belt out of roofing string, he decided to go back to standard steering. We headed for home, and all made it up the ‘steep’ part of the track, only Brett having a bit of trouble because he didn’t have his normal tyres on and couldn’t crawl up like he’s got used to.

It wasn’t the kind of weekend we thought we were going have, but there was some productive track clearing; next time we’re aiming to make it to the kauri tree….