Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Author

Grampians Fire Rehab

kieranl

10-Apr-2006
8:57:57 PM

First climbing working bee for this was on April Fools Day at Summer Day Valley.

I was recovering from a mid-week business trip to Newcastle (only one night there and was too tired to check out local climbing gyms) so didn't turn up until 1 PM, expecting to see lots of people. Well, they were double-parked at Flat Rock but there were bugger-all people at Summer-Day. I soon found Dave Witham, Pete Canning and Ray Lassman trimming vegetation in Summer Day Valley itself.
We then repaired to the old steps down from an early camp-site where Ant Callaghan and the park service volunteer coordinator (whose name escapes me I'm sad to say) were busily demolishing the wooden step-frames. We all joined them except for Dave who continued with whimsical track-clearing to the car-park (if Lauren Jackson ever visits she will have a hard time poking her eye out).
The idea was that the steps would be taken apart and any useful materials would be used in track rebuilding near Halls Gap on the following weekend. This was fine and dandy, except no-one seems to have told the guys who built those steps about Parks Victoria standards. The steps were built to stay put! They were made of a beautiful hardwood that was only rotted in a few places. The forms had been first nailed together and then bolted onto the angle-iron uprights which were sometimes over a metre into the soil. In some spots the different levels had actually been bolted together making removal desperately hard.
Anyhow we got it all out in the afternoon : a truckload of wood for track reclamation elsewhere. The Park Service then hosted us afternoon tea at the Mt Zero Olive Grove and it was great.
What's really interesting is that none of the four volunteers on the day were under 50 and all local residents. I know it was short notice and all that but that's going to be the nature of the beast.
Anyhow it was a good day and it was really good to have a chat with Dave Witham about his experience of the fires.
Thanks to Ant for organising and the parks guy (whose name continues to escape me, sorry).

kieranl

10-Apr-2006
9:06:52 PM

Oh, and we also flagged with the parks volunteer coordinator that the track down from Flat Rock into the Amphitheatre is in need of attention.

nmonteith

11-Apr-2006
9:01:03 AM

There is certainly a huge pool of dedicated volunteers if the project is publicized enough (see Burnly
thread!)

Richard

11-Apr-2006
1:23:21 PM

our usual plan is to run a VCC trip on the same weekend to the same location .. that helps get some more people. i think this working bee came up at short notice .. no fault of Ant's but thats just the way it was, and the VCC trip on the same weekend as to a different location...

climbingjac

11-Apr-2006
2:07:42 PM

On 11/04/2006 nmonteith wrote:
>There is certainly a huge pool of dedicated volunteers if the project is
>publicized enough (see Burnly
>thread!)

Indeed. The contributors list for Burnley now clocks in at over 120 people. I keep a list of them as many have specifically asked to be invited to additional (Burnley) working bees. I think having a sufficient amount of notice is important. I have the luxury of being able to organise some of my working bees as late as three days prior ; but my location is in Melbourne near where people live. Summerday is a tad further away so more notice would be required I imagine.....

There are 5 messages in this topic.