The harvest of the wind

The high winds of April which helped to sink the Wahine in Wellington harbour ran like a will-o'-the-wisp through the Golden Downs forest, cutting a swathe through some sections of the tree-clad hills, and, strangely, leaving others completely untouched. Originally, officers of the Forest Service estimated that about 600 acres of timber in various blocks had suffered (an estimated 5 to 6 million cubic feet of timber). Since then, however, more trees have fallen and, to clean up the areas affected, it is estimated that a further 400 acres of trees will have to be felled, Contractors are already hard at work bringing out the wind-blown timber and the tempo of work will be stepped up tremendously in the next few months. We visited one of the affected areas recently and found the gang of Joe Stuart hard at it. At top left Joe 'surveys the herculean task confronting him and his men while at far left trucks are loaded from the stockpile of logs already winched up by Pat Fowler (above). The winch-line down the hill is shown at left. One isolated area affected was on the Wai-iti road, where we found Forest Service employees Les Jenks, Tom Phillips and Kiwi Lemon (Kaingaroa) on the job (below).

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