Half a year later.

Many thanks to those compassionate souls who threw me lifebuoys of ‘virtual hugs’. I have been clinging to them for months.

Every last friend in real life has cast me adrift. It would seem that if I’m not the one keeping in touch and doing things for others then I am of no value. I crave emails, but spend my time in a daily chore of deleting spam, (my Hobbling username at optusnet.com.au is how to contact me) though answering emails is not something that is easy for me.

I have made so many comments to people’s blogposts in my mind. I really really need a futuristic high-tech machine that can freeze-frame thoughts to computer before they drain through the memory sieve.
I enjoy still feeling connected with people online by being able to read their blogs, though some have deleted their blogs and swept all tracks clean.

So finally I have pushed myself to unscramble the neurones that lead thoughts to become written words.
My blog needs an update. Events have reached a climax, of sorts.
The stress and shock have tipped me into a black hole healthwise.

I will tell the story backwards.

Each trip to our farm lately has been heavy with dread of what new damage we would find.
This caps the lot.

Our neighbour disregarded my letter requesting she discontinue her fencing at the rainforest edge until my fencing contractor could return with his own choice of materials.
When we had seen, a week earlier, the bulldozed and hacked down trees and the line of starposts diverting away from the north-south boundary (shown by red arrow)



directly towards our treasured giant figtree,



we assumed it was intended to wrap wire around the trunk. I was not happy about that, but at least it could be undone.

But the neighbour’s method was far more ‘clever’. Just chainsaw a metre deep slot in the buttress roots and position a starpost behind with the wires running through. Save the effort of digging an end-stay post hole!





Of course it won’t be long before the cows find out how to push further uphill and around the figtree.
Then, as has happened for the past 5 months, the same 16 cows with calves will pour through the rainforest down to their familiar encampment around our house and barn where over and over they yank off the downpipes on tanks and buildings to create slush after rain.

And why the sudden action (last week) by the neighbour after 5 whole months of cows in my garden

[you do not want to see those photos]

grazing new growth on fruit trees and leaving copious cowpats?

It was not concern for thirsty cows, or damaged wallaby fences around young orchards (which have otherwise happily withstood wallabies for many years).

It was because my son and I recently built a ‘holding yard’ in the bottom corner of our property (within sight of the neighbour’s house) so we could more easily herd the cows down along the fire-damaged fenceline and avoid getting ourselves in any trouble from putting cows out on the road.

Cows were very promptly retrieved from this yard. Can’t possibly have cows being confined!

It was the sound of starposts being thumped for this holding yard that got the neighbour to vist me for the first time ever (in 15 years). Must have guessed what I was planning.

I assured them that my fire insurance would cover the whole fence, but I could do with assistance in finding a good fencing contractor.

The memorable reply was "I don’t do that sh - -". The confrontation was to ask me to supply materials and pay for their labour. I naturally declined (since their past examples of scrub fences have involved barbed wire strung from tree to tree, so that trees up along the rainforest edge have rusty wire embedded in calloused trunks) in favour of using a fencing contractor who would comply with the terms of the fire insurance.

If only months ago I had had the energy to haul fencing material up the steep hill and build my own boundary fence where a few trees killed by the fire a year ago had finally fallen across the wires, opening easy passage to cows through our rainforest.
But I have been trying over and over to get around five fencing contractors to come out to look over the job (550 metres of fence repair/replacement), and only one so far has provided a written quote (for insurance requirements).
Most just don’t want the work.

The immediate cow problem has been resolved, although at our extreme cost.
I am still waiting for a fencer to make secure the whole fenceline.
But no fencer is going to continue the fence that last 200 metres through the scrub to our top corner -- somehow I will have to do that. We have gotten ourselves lost a few times trying to find the ancient barbed wire strands up the hill. It’s hard using a compass when rainforest trees block all view of the fenceline further downhill. We believe we have found the top corner (a tree with wire embedded in a right angle around its trunk), but I’m thinking of buying a handheld GPS of some sort if it will help me track a straight south – north line down through the forest to meet up with the existing fence.