Читать книгу Rambles in Australia онлайн

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In the neighbourhood of the sawmill all the air is filled with flying sawdust, and the sweet scent of the freshly sawn wood. The dust falls to the ground in deep red masses, the flying chips look like scraps of raw meat, but the rich colour fades when they dry. The process of preparing the karri wood for use is at present a very expensive one. The planks have to be stewed in order to preserve them. They are put for this purpose into immense tanks of molasses, and left seething there to harden. It is hoped that scientific experiment may evolve a less costly method. After going over the mills we were taken up a little railway line into the forest to see a tree felled. We sat on benches on trucks behind the engine, which carried a supply of wood for its boiler, for the cost of bringing coal up to Big Brook would be quite prohibitive. Even the boilers that work the mills are fed with wood. The engine was run by a magnificent-looking old stoker with a white beard and the air of a patriarch. When we scrambled off the trucks on to the soft, rich earth of the forest, we had to wait to let a bullock team go by, twenty-four of them pulling one log with a big metal “shoe” on the end to prevent its digging into the ground. The passage left a deep slide in the red earth. The bullocks are bound together in twos by very uncomfortable-looking, heavy wooden yokes, and their progress is punctuated by frightful yells and cracking of whips from the drivers.