Cattle Yard Repairs

The previous owner had installed a considerable cattle handling facility on our property (it was much bigger when he owned it) that included yards, stalls, a crush and a loading race and ramp.
He also had a timber mill on site so the posts and rails used in construction were high quality eucalyptus hardwood.
But over the years some parts deteriorated due to rot and others to termite attack.
We replaced rails with commercial hardwood ones and posts cut from our own trees. The heavier duty posts were supplied by our firewood man, Laurey. Unfortunately (for us) he recently retired meaning a reasonable supply line has dried up.

Over the last few years, the yard deterioration accelerated and a major overhaul became necessary.
When I priced the hardwood rails and posts, I suffered a severe case of sticker shock.
It’s not that we will use the yards to any great extent as our cows are here to stay but it’s good to have them in reasonable condition.
So after some discussion with more experienced cattle men, it was decided that we could go with the significantly cheaper heavy duty H4 CCA treated pine posts and rails. Apart from the much better price, they are simpler to work with being lighter and much easier to drill for bolting or coach screwing especially as we use 130mm and sometimes 150mm M10s. We only snapped one drill bit! And that was in an old hardwood post.
My friend Stirls came down to help and for 5 days we removed and replaced posts and rails.
Getting some of the big old rotting posts out was not an easy job especially when their bases were still in good condition and dug 1m into the ground. Neither was resetting good but heavy hardwood rails to the new pine posts.

So at times it was slow work. With one rain interrupted day, we didn’t get all the planned chores done.
But the essentials are in now in place and the remainder (mostly the race) can be done another time.
We celebrated our achievements, on Stirl’s last day, with a nice lunch of fish, chips and potato scallops at Innes Wharf at Batemans Bay, a favourite of his, thirty minutes drive south.
Neighbour Bob will help me swing a gate off a replacement post sometime next week and all will be good.