Wired Magazine

Written by Debbie White

There were a few wild cards in the NZFC South Island Doubles fencing competition at the Southern Field Days. With the 10 available lines quickly filled, the fence line after a few alterations in wire gauge, post set out and an added railed corner, made for an interesting competition line to both erect and judge.

The Goldpine roundwood was pre driven due to the ground conditions being essentially a bed of mining tailings. We were musing before the competition as to whether we might get away with post hole borers in the future as the strainers and Superposts® drove in well with a Revolution Telescopic 180 with a 300 kg hammer. But evidence from what came out of the ground via the two hand dug holes for the Rhino® half rounds, was further reinforced when part time North/South Islander Jared Nicholson broke his shear pin when his speed borer got stuck. Meantime the full time South Islanders seemed to know something and were picking away with shovels, spades and crow bars.

The Waratah Ezypipe® strainers were pre driven and competitors had to erect the Ajusta -stay® and drive in the Jiostar® posts, being judged on level and height. With short work being made of these, there was 5 x line wires of WIREMARK 2.5 mm, plus a Strainrite outrigger on the wire side and a w-claw electric wire on the other side of the fence. A separate Strainrite irrigator crossing with 7 metre bungy gate, and a Strainrite award winning Activator Strap around the face of a Superpost®. About half the field chose to use a Stockade STI 400, some never having used one before with good scoring and a slight time advantage given the limited number of Superposts®

Competitors came from as far away as Ashburton, with a strong offering of Southland fencing contractors. There were a number of new competitors which was great to have, with Craig Sinclair & Grant Sinclair, from Sinclair Fencing Balcutha, Blair Sutherland & Aaron Sutherland from Southland Fencing Invercargill, Haydon Fuller, Fuller Fencing Waimumu, Chris Pudney from Fairlie. Phil Coutts has been fencing for Ben Haugh Fencing for 6 months. Ex Young Farmers Alan Harvey & Jono Satterthwaite from Oamaru and Lyndon Wallace from Wyndham had all the making of full time fencers, with Lyndon teaming up with Hayden Fuller for 2^nd place.

With 3 South Island competitions behind them, some of the well placed fencers in the past such as Nick Terry, James Oliver, Tony Brady, Haydon Condon, Aaron Prouting had some rookie mistakes which cost them and kept them from the top of the placings.

Nick Stanger Stanger Fencing Oamarau and Lindsay Hayman Hayman Fencing Ashburton took out 1^st place which earns them the Prize of an all expenses paid trip to the Fieldays in June to compete in the heats on the Monday. This is made possible due to the sponsor’s generosity in investing and sponsoring these South Island fencing competitions. NZFC would like to thank WIREMARK, Goldpine, Waratah, Strainrite, Stockade and Revolution Postdrivers.

Anyone who organises an event or a competition understands the considerable work involved. This year it was made much easier due to Simon Fuller of Fuller Fencing who put several days of his time into organising the set up and pull down. Nick Liefting flew down for chief judge, plus set up/pull down. Tony White set up/pulled down and judged. Trevor Bell, Warren from Stockade, Donald from Strainrite, Dave from Waratah who helped set up the judges demo fence and judged. Southern Field Days committee member Steve Henderson who liaised on the committee’s behalf was exceptionally helpful. The team effort, working together, quality product, along with the great attitude of the competitors made for a very good competition which resulted in the professional profiling of the fencing industry.

Results

For more info on fencing competitions head to NZFC website

So a fairly new “all the gear and no idea”, broken down old fencer, too old for steep farm stuff – that’s young fella work right?, got offered a plum job, a deer exclusion fence on Stewart Island. There are plenty of Whitetail on Stewart Island, as you know!
The Rakiura Maori Land Trust administer a wide portfolio of SILNA lands on Rakiura, and one property at the Old Neck offered the opportunity to exclude deer with a short fence from cliff to cliff across a peninsular – simple really!
The Trust’s consultant, Roger Lough arranged for us to inspect the site together in late July, and the challenges of the job started to become apparent, very exposed beaches with tricky approaches, no machinery access possible, thick “muttonbird” scrub and some restrictions on what could be cut e.g. Southern Rata or moved no cutting into dunes. Some positives included that it looked like a good line of 250 meters might be possible with no gullies or guts, and following a very smooth contour. In addition, the Trust agreed that the use of Waratah galvanised Jio Maxy posts and strainer/strut systems – on the first look very expensive product, but for this or other jobs where access for conventional machinery is not practical – very cost effective.
It was obvious that logistics for men, materials, and weather were going to be the key considerations. I generally quote all my work, my wife says that’s why I don’t make any money, but there were just too many variables for this job to have a fixed cost.
So I split my pricing into elements where I could control costs, things like accommodation and the actual fence construction, and the variable costs like transport, the clearing of the line, etc.
I was assisted by Brendon Crequer of Waratah and Ryan D’Ath of Farmlands to get the gear – and worked with Paula Blair, Farmlands Invercargill who did a great job.
At the 2017 FCANZ conference in Christchurch I resolved to approach someone up to help “on the line” with the fencing and after an intense selection process, I have a lot more sympathy for Steve Hansen now, I lined up Noaksee – and like the good bugger he is, he accepted right off. Noaksee had a trip south scheduled so it made sense to tie the project in with it, but working to a fixed timetable with Stewart Island weather was always going to be tough.
The Trust wanted to use 150 dropper deer netting, which weights 120kgs per coil and as it had to be carried up a beach, then up quite a steep track for 150 metres or so I broke the coils down into 33M lengths (40 kgs) and re-rolled them. The day I had to load them on the trailer it blew like hell and until I parked up into the wind it actually blew the load off twice – I lost a lot of sweat and made up new cuss words. The Jio Maxy’s are not light either so they were bundled into 3’s.
Just over two tonnes of materials and gear were loaded onto the Foveaux Freighter for delivery to the Halfmoon Bay wharf.
From there they were collected by Jim Barnett who operates a barge on the island. Jim had just finished pulling up his oyster farm due to
the Bonamia outbreak – a devastating blow. However, he rounded up a crew, and after two attempts due to the weather and the difficult beach at Sand-spit, got all the gear above the tideline. A major milestone.
I’d allowed two days to cut the line and two to construct the fence. Noaksee turned up as promised on a Saturday and we went through all our tools to ensure everything we needed was packed . . . a few wheels fell off, the motorised driver wouldn’t fit the Maxy’s. I had previously built a special driver to fit the 2.7 metre high Maxy’s so we had that covered but the fear of missing a vital tool or component was very real. It’s a long swim to get it! The second wheel to go was the weather, it completely turned and the Sunday ferry we were supposed to be on was canceled.

Foster Price, Price Fencing