Clearing Alien vegetation off the dam wall.

Today we brought in a TLB. I booked it for three hours. we started at 9am. I am trying out the TLB to see what it can do in what space of time. I am happy to say we managed to clear alien vegetation in a 3m wide strip all the way though to the cottage. We cleared Ink Berry, Black Wattle, Port Jackson ( Acacia Saligna) and Poplars. Our plan is not to surface the cleared strip we are driving on or build any culvert, as these could be understood to be  "Structure" the construction of which are "listed activities" in wetland areas in terms of environmental legislation.

I can now drive my car along this cleared strip and get all the way to the cottage. There has been vehicular access to the cottage for the last 20 or 30 years. Not since the subdivision which somehow cat off the access route and located in the neighbours property. The strip of alien vegetation I have cleared runs along the existing dam. I am sure it will be a problem in a very big flood once every 10 years, but I suppose then we will have to be cut off from the world for a day or two.

The TLB can knock down trees, move sand, dig the dam deeper. Its a very versatile tool.

It cost R300 per hour. so R900 rand in total for this morning work. We hired it from a company called Glendore Sand. The drivers name was Nathi. He was great.

To hire people to do that by hand would have been much more expensive and take a huge amount of time and management input.Its quite sad. So many people are looking for work, but it just does not make sense.


I loaded these videos that give an idea of the work.

 http://youtu.be/_dV_3S54adc
http://youtu.be/En1nsElKnwA