Ray Hocking of Orbost . ray was born in 1929 in Orbost hospital to Paul and Doris may (archer ) ray had five brothers and two step sisters ray started his working life in the bush at 16 with bill Morrison at murrengower on the silver wattle snigging it with draught horses . that was bloody hard work he remembers . ray eventually went to Bairnsdale working for lorry minefy at Lucknow sawmills . after a few years ray moved to Cann River and remained there for 31 yrs . ray worked as a sleeper cutter for many years and could square a sleeper in 6 mins with a board axe . ray worked in places like Noorenby Clubterrace Orbost Bombala and many others . ray worked for Jacky mead cutting sleepers for the new south wales railways at Bombala from Noorinbee . ray started working for sumbergs in the mill at Cann River after this until ray bought his own trucks . rays first trucks were a 1953/4 fargo and federal . ray logged for sumbergs and kasokovic . ray continued this for 15 years until he went to work for the forestry commission at the log checking station . he worked for 9.3/4 years at the forestry and loved it . ray would have been at the forestry until his last working days accept when a girl of 21 years came to run the forestry at Cann river and I will be taking over now she said and I have just come out of university . rays reply was oh did you just you wouldnt know a tree from a corner post . with that he gave his weeks notice . Brian ward came up to ray and said you cant do that and ray said I cant work with that . ray then started hocks freight running from Bairnsdale to Mallacoota . ray first started wood chopping in 1967 at Cann River . they had 35 members at the Cann river axemans club . the cann river club ran 8 Australasian championships with axemen from all over the world . ray chopped with blokes at Cann River that were that were some of the greatest like jack otoole martin otoole Jim alexander David foster Garry smith Greg lovell Lionel fulgrabe to name a few . and many great others in the wood chopping circle . ray would like to say how great all the blokes were that he has worked with and chopped against that are not with us anymore .RIP at a wood chop in Bombala ray remembers Greg lovell was off 32 Garry smith off 29 on a 40 stand block and Garry smith who was 610 and compared to Greg who was 510 who knocked that block off before Garry smith even turned . ray remembers lance bills telling him how he unloaded 103 timber trucks at the Orbost rail in one day being the record for the most amount of timber . ray laments on the many terrible accidents he saw working in the bush and the hard work it was but says it with pride of being a bush and timber worker . ray had his own bush accident ending up with 93 stitches in his left arm and not able to work for two years, Ray also raced boats for 3 years.. ray remembers thinking how hard it was with a cross cut saw and even using a lazy stick as he calls it ( a bike tube on the other end of crosscut tied to a tree as the second man ) and how good it would be to have something better . then Butterfeilds who had the first sawmill in Orbost and Orbost had 40 sleeper cutters at the time in 1947 when butterfeilds brought up a demonstration chainsaw . he says all of the sleeper cutters turned up at the railway station to see this demonstration of this new invention. ray thinks it was a Dolmar and how it changed everything of the working world in the bush . Ray Hocking
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 00:10:33 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015