Fridays Fences

Today's Fridays Fences photos depict a scene that gave my family an immediate moment of riotous laughter, followed by a few days of chuckles.  But first the story - there is always a story behind a good photograph.

We live in a bushfire prone area and the Electricity Trust has decided to reduce the fire risk by cutting back trees in the Adelaide Hills that are deemed too close to electricity cables. That is fair enough and no-one objects to this happening.

However the various contractors who do this work are forever upsetting land owners by coming onto properties without telling land owners and making an absolute mess of the cutting back. No thought at all for the aesthetics of what they are doing, no knowledge of the species they are lopping and the best way to go about it, no consideration for the age, beauty or importance of the tree.

They are universally disliked, not for the job they have to do, but for the arrogantand ignorant way they go about it.  My husband has is sick of it all after losing several trees, having many disfigured and having trucks drive through our property. He has repeatedly asked them to have the courtesy to check with us before they do anything.  This they refuse to do - they do not have the time to knock on every door! They have the right to come onto a property whenever and wherever they choose.

Well, the last lot decided that they had to trim some pines on our property and the quickest way to get to them was to drive across our front paddock.  This they proceeded to do!!  Unfortunately they had failed to check out the area first and did not notice that the front paddock was a waterway and very wet from the recent torrential rains.

Halfway across!!!!!!

Up to the axles in mud.

 They had to come to the door then to ask if we had a tractor to pull them out. Sorry, no tractor here, but we were able to lend them a couple of spades.  They radioed for help.

Help arrived, but first they had to unhitch the chipping machine from the new vehicle. Then discussions, arguments, trials etc took place. Two hours later the vehicle was extricated from the mud.

If they had spent two minutes knocking on the door and telling us what they planned to do, they could have been shown an easy way to get their vehicle around to the pines!!!

Liz Needle   -   linking with Fridays Fences.