From Lofty.
Black Wattle Firewood. © Lofty.
Never heard of Black Wattle before. It’s a very beautiful and striking wood. It’s an Acacia, but there are so many Black Wattles!
Venerable fence post. © Lofty.
I have a thing for fence posts myself, they have been frequent subjects – some of them have such character. I really like this shot. Thanks, Lofty!
I can’t remember the species of wattle, but it’s endemic to the region. It’s a small (12ft) tree of the Live Fast, Die Young variety and after 10 years turns into an ugly black skeleton with crabbed fingers reaching longingly for the birds flying freely in the sky. Two years after death the thick black bark falls off and the remaining trunk steadily grows pale until it eventually succumbs to become grey forest floor litter or even better, firewood. This one got the chop because it fell over in a storm and blocked a friend’s driveway.
The barbs on the wires make me think of lines of bull ants, protecting their nest. The post is a remnant of an estate across the road that has been in the same family for 150 years. The patriarch must have died recently because developers have now chopped our side of it up into 10 acre lots. The first mundane house has appeared and I expect this old post will get replaced with a stinky treated pine one in the near future. Life moves on.
Love that weathered fence post. Are they usually that thick in Australia?
Lofty:
Oh no. Nothing is quite as ugly as modern housing. You see that sort of thing all over here, a huge tract of land, chopped up into small parcels, with houses going up jammed right next to one another. It’s a blight. At least 10 acres provides a bit of space, although that doesn’t help with having your view permanently screwed up.
Ice Swimmer
That is a strainer post, put in on a bend in the fence line so larger than normal. Our street wriggles a lot with the ridge line. Not withstanding the fact that clearing the land for a sheep run produces a huge surplus of timber so posts can be made as big as needed. The stringybarks around here are very rot and fire resistant and are easy to split into posts. I believe the last major felling was during WW2 to repair the jetties by the local gulf. Even in sea water they last up to 50 years. The jetties didn’t need much work until the 1990’s. So that post is probably over 70 years old.
Caine
Fortunately the street frontages are pretty wide on that side so we will be able to enjoy the view between the houses. That’s after we trudge up the steep drive of our one acre block to peep over the ridge. It’s the builders trucks and construction noises that will be the bigger annoyance as they go up. That’s the penalty of owning only a single acre in paradise, doesn’t give you much standing as landed gentry!
Lofty @ 4
I see. I remembered that the fence posts in my grandparents’ farm were much more slender when they had cattle. But they had fairly small rectangular pastures in the middle of flat hay, barley and oat fields and by the time I was able to make observations, all electric fences.