Tidying up
The burn
After months of scrub cutting the pioneers waited for suitable dry condition to have a burn. Huge fires were set and the cut vegetation burned away. Some times there were very few days dry enough to burn. In some years the summers were so wet that the burn had to put off until the next summer. It is important to note here that the rainfall was probably much greater in those days because there was so much forest. This really cannot be proven as rainfall statistics were not kept.
One pioneer W H C Holmes described the burn in descriptive language: "The roar of the fire itself, the incessant crackling of the wire and swordgrass, the fizz and splutter of the gas in the green twigs, the occasional loud report of a bursting sandstone boulder, the prolonged crashing of a big green fallen tree, the heavy thud of a huge dry stump, the belching roar of a great hollow dry tree that is pumping volumes of flame and smoke from a dozen or more portholes between its roots and the upmost limit - and everything as far as the eye can reach, that weird, eerie, livid, yellowish green hue, giving all around the most unearthly appearance, the face of the sun like a great dull copper disc ..."
Holmes in Land of the Lyrebird, p 69
Picking up
Several days were then spent picking up, stacking and reburning. Only stumps and a few spars (trunks) were left. The term picking up does not explain the work it is expected to describe. It meant cutting up and stacking all the fallen timber that remained ready to be burned again. In the early days this was done by hand with only an axe to help. The heaps were burnt at the end of the day if it were dry enough, if not on a warm dry day in early autumn with a good wind. The heaps would burn for 2 hours or so then the men would go in with a shovel to restack any logs and charcoal then burn it again.
Land of the Lyrebird, pp 67-76
Stoving
Stoving was the name given to the burning of stumps. Dirt was packed up around the smouldering stump and it would slowly burn away.
An illustration of stoving from Lyn Skillern.
