Mention of the tradesman in a past posting almost electrocuting himself ( and by the way at the same time he did awful things to the meal I was cooking on the electric stove ! ) made me think of the Big Dead Gum . I always thought of it in those terms , because of its relation to the two other big living gums that stood on the ridge road boundaries just outside our fence .

There were gums , big red gums , big grey gums and ironbarks all along the road , and one of the almost obsessed greenies from further out towards Rainbow's End had actually made wooden plaque type labels for a lot of them , giving their common and botanical names , and bearing an estimate of their ages .

I used the word obsessed , which is probably an overstatement , but he was an odd character who had little personal social interaction with other residents, except for the Bush Fire Brigade , and as well , I believe , the attempts to preserve native plants along the road to Crescent Head .

There may have been reason for his self-isolation , as I understand that he was busted a couple of times for growing marijuana .

However , I admire wholeheartedly his attempts to preserve the ridge road as a ridge road , and his vigorous protective efforts of the trees that would have to be sacrificed were it to be widened for the ever-increasing traffic along it . One of those trees would have been the three hundred year old grey gum that stood at our gate , and the redgum a few meters further along , that housed a bees' nest in its highest branch , as well as nests for several birds.

Gums are great droppers of limbs , especially the redgum , so much so that the latter variety had the bushman's nickname of widowmaker. There was , as a result , plenty of firewood just for the simple picking up , and that kind was very useful for the lighting and feeding of barbecues . But other , thicker pieces were needed to keep the slow combustion stove going .

Finding enough for the first few months was no trouble as a couple of medium sized gums had been cleared by the bulldozer for its track down to the site of the dam , and those had been chain-sawed into lumps small enough to be collected , split and stored in the shed till they made perfect dry fuel . I did not feel that this storage was totally satisfactory , so I embarked on the second building project , having learnt from the errors in the construction of the pump shelter .

I still made errors , but they were minor ones that did not interfere with the storage and drying of any wood collected . It also provided storage space for the many and varied pots that that I had gained as they came with with the trees both fruiting and decorative and the shrubs purchased for the block .

Sometimes , if a tree had become dangerous along the road and it had to be felled , I could get the council workers to cut the remains into reasonable lengths to be stored . The workers were a friendly co-operative bunch , and their presence nearby one day gave me an idea about the Big Dead Gum. I had stood at its base outside my fence , done a little bit of no doubt inaccurate triangulation , and thought to myself that should it ever come down , the topmost branch reaching towards the house might just reach the back veranda, with disastrous consequences.

On this assumption I rang the Council , and within a couple of days a team of workers arrived . I put a proposal to the main man and he acquiesced with rustic bonhomie . I had asked that they drop the tree into my property , so that I could use it for firewood . It had been dead for years and was well dried out.

Without much ado , they rolled back a couple of meters of the dilapidated barbed wire fence , took out their big chainsaws , felled the tree with no damage to any of the other trees on the block , and rewired the fence . I felt that some beers were a good reward , since the council was not charging me anything , and they accepted them with much pleasure .

Some of the upper limbs had broken off , and were easily dragged over to the shed , where I was able to run a cable out to power an electric saw which I owned , that was just big enough to cope . The main trunk was a different matter .

On some of our car trips up to the block we had stopped at a cafe at Moorland, near where the wife was born . It advertised The Best Scones On the Coast and I can vouch for that ; they were huge , fluffy , and when smothered in jam and cream , absolutely delicious. The walls of the cafe section were decorated with varying types of cross-cut saw, from medium size to great two-handers .

I felt a tremendous urge to own one , and when I saw a second hand six feet long two-hander for sale in the Kempsey store where I had my ordinary saws sharpened I bought it . I also bought a giant version of the ordinary style of saw . They were cheap , and are now probably worth a lot as antiques . My son has them now.

Without a partner working with me on the bigger saw , there was no way I could have cut though the major trunk . What I was able to do was to cut a fair way down into it about six feet along , insert wedges , and split the trunk with a blocksplitter cum sledgehammer. I was able to do that all along the trunk. These pieces could again be cut for firewood , or also be used as I did use them , for the walls of a compost heap. That saved buying railways sleepers for the job. The result was not so neat , but it was sturdy and had that honest rustic look .

The core of the tree had the largest internal termite nest I've ever seen running up through it , together with many strange and varied wood eating beetles . I found them fascinating .

I cannot be sure of this , but I did find lots of what I think were Witchetty Grubs , the larvae of the Ghost Moth. They certainly looked like the ones pictured on the net. They are an aboriginal delicacy as bush tucker.

I was not so short of protein that I tried eating them , either raw or grilled .