Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull by Jack Lasenby Page A

Uncle Trev stuck his hand in the cake tin and felt around. “It’s empty,” he said. “I’ll hide it behind the other tins in the cupboard. With a bit of luck, your mother won’t remember filling it with Louise cake this morning.”
    â€œMum never forgets a thing,” I reminded Uncle Trev. “She’ll give you what for.” But he’d grabbed his hat and was gone.
    I lay and thought how I’d make pook’s feet out of a couple of old tennis rackets, like the snowshoes I’d seen at the flicks about the Mounties in Canada. I’d ask Uncle Trev for some old dog collars. The County Council gave him a new one each year, when he registered Old Tip. They’d do for straps.
    I’d tell Mum I was feeling much better, and she’d be so pleased about that, she mightn’t think about looking for the cake tin.

Chapter Eighteen
    How They Built the Rangitoto Lighthouse
    â€œYou left school when you were big enough to carry a kerosene tin of water in each hand,” said Uncle Trev. “My first job was leading a string of pack-horses loaded with tucker for the kauri bush camps up the back of Mercury Bay.”
    â€œRemember you told me about a kauri that was so tall, you could see the South Pole from its top? I gave a morning talk at school, and Mr Jones laughed and said it made a good yarn.”
    Uncle Trev nodded. “There was another kauri up in the head of Mill Creek, so tall I get a crick in my neck just thinking about it.”
    â€œCrikey.”
    â€œThe trunk was so thick through we had to lash two cross-cut saws together to cut it down. Half a dozen men each side tallied on to ropes tied to the handles. One team ran with the rope over their shoulders, pulling the saw through the cut. Then they had to run backwards while the other team ran and pulled the saw the other way.
    â€œInstead of tramping all the way back to camp, we slept inside the scarf, the notch you cut out on the side you want the tree to fall. And you know we never felt a drop of rain in there.”
    â€œWhat if it came down in the night and squashed you?”
    â€œNo show of that. That kauri was so thick, it took all of eighteen months to saw through, and when we finished, it sat on its stump and wouldn’t fall. We drove steel wedges into the back-cut, but it squeezed them out like orange pips. One of my mates got hit by a flying wedge and he still limps.
    â€œThe bush boss said he was losing money on the big kauri. He told us to leave it alone, and the wind would blow it over.”
    â€œAnd did it?”
    â€œWe had a storm, and the wind was so strong it blew our tent away, with a new chum hanging on to a rope. The last we saw of him, he was sailing over the top of the Coromandel Range.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œThe tent came down on Waiheke Island. I believe he still lives there.”
    â€œIn the tent?”
    â€œI believe so.”
    â€œDid the wind blow down the big kauri?”
    â€œIt just stood on its stump and started growing again,” said Uncle Trev. “That tree was so big, it grew that fast you could hear the sap wood joining together, closing over the saw-cut till it looked like a thick belt around the trunk.”
    â€œIs it still up Mill Creek?”
    Uncle Trev shook his head. “The contractor sacked the bush boss and reckoned he’d see we cut it down properly. But that old kauri, he’d grown so much bigger we had to chop the scarf twice as big and tie three cross-cuts end to end. It came down this time, but it was so tall now, the top of the tree didn’t hit the ground till a couple of days after it started falling, and then it came down with such an almighty thump, it buried itself in the ground. Took eighteen men seven months using thirty-six horses and scoops to dig it clear.
    â€œWe sniped the butt end and pulled the log down the gully with sixteen teams of bullocks, eighty in each team.