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Sam Roberts surveys the horizon – he may be turning 80 on Wednesday, but his eyes are sharp. He points out fallen radiata pine on a distant slope.
They’ve toppled over in the wind and the wet, soggy ground after the atmospheric river event in August. He’s seen this many a time before, yet when Roberts first started in forestry at the age of 16 or 17 in 1960, things were very different.
Back then they used draft horses to drag the logs out. The lads tried to chop the smaller trees to fall on each other for laughs, and race each other up the hills, he’s told his colleagues.
Now, the downing of the logs is done by a felling machine, the dragging of the logs by a massive, aerial hauler, like a video arcade game fishing for soft toys.
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“You can’t jump over the bank and go cutting trees off with a chainsaw or anything like that,” Roberts said, giving me a tour of the felling operation.
“You’ve got to use these machines. Takes the fun out of it.”
Health and safety back then – well, there was none, Roberts says. He reckons he’s been through about 60 chainsaws through the years, though when he first started he was cutting them down with two man handsaws.
Aside from some impressive long distance vision, his ears are in good working nick too – and he picks up instructions from the foreman on the radio more readily than I do, four decades his junior.
Roberts gets up at 4am for his 6:30am start, leaving his house at Richmond at 5am with some packed sandwiches for lunch, the kind of red eye early morning schedule that perhaps radio presenters might relate to. It was frosty a few days ago, he says, and in summer the sun is punishing.
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Asked what he enjoys about the job, Roberts, a man of few words, said: “It passes the time.”
On the Tophouse hills, Roberts uses a chainsaw to chop up firewood, and does quality control – he cuts the knots out of wood, trims limbs, and marks the logs before they are loaded onto trucks, where they’ll be sent to local mills, to China, and South Korea.
On his days off, Roberts goes pig hunting and trout fishing – it’s like he has an aversion to being couped up between four walls.
And asked when he plans on hanging up the chainsaw for good, Roberts said he would be taking it day by day.
“I’ll just hang around until they get sick of me or something,” he said.
“My knee’s a bit buggered, I’ll wait till that gets fixed up, and then see what happens. If I can jump around after that I’ll be right.”
He doesn’t have any secrets to share as to his longevity – he doesn’t smoke, but said he “used to drink a bit”.
The soon-to-be octogenarian isn’t planning on resting up on his birthday. He’ll bring a cake, as he does every year, and reckons that’s the reason they keep him on.
“I won’t take a day off work, that mucks things up for everyone,” he said.
When Roberts’ colleagues were asked if he was in it for the spectacular vistas, they disagreed.
“Nah,” they said. “He just likes trees.”
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