Yes, ah, the s-- ah, ah, quite a few- if you go into- up into Darling, today you'll get farms where there's no rail fences hardly at all. They're all built with just stone dykes. (laughs)

Interviewer: You said rail fences. Did- would you use that name for any fence that's made out of- of wood? Speaker: Ah, well, out of wood, yes, or- that was, ah, that was- they used rail- rail fences or a log fence before we ever got wire. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Yeah. Interviewer 1: Um- Speaker: Ah, generally cedar. Cedar rail.

Interviewer: What's the difference between a rail fence and a log fence? Speaker: Well, the- the log is the- is just the- the whole tree put down and they just took and put them up, ah- it took, ah, three logs to make a- a row, one on top of the other and- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Crosses between them.

Speaker: Some of those logs, you-know, were, ah- were maybe twenty feet long for a panel- Interviewer: Uh-huh. Speaker: Type-of-thing. Interviewer: Are they the ones they put in a zig-zag? Speaker: No. No, those- Interviewer: That's- Speaker: That was rail. Rail fences that- that- Interviewer: Even when it was in a zig-zag shape? Speaker: Yes, that was all rails. Interviewer: I see.

Interviewer: No. What other sorts of fences, ah, did- did they make then? As- well, as well as the dikes? Speaker: Just the rail fences, you-know? Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: You know what rail fences are like? Interviewer: I've seen a lot of different, um, styles of them. Speaker: Mm-hm. Interviewer: Around here. Now there's one that goes sort of zig-zag. ...

Speaker: But they call them a stump fence. Interviewer: It would be mainly rock fences or um snake fences. Speaker: Yeah. W-- ah- Interviewer: M-- why? Speaker: A rail fence is we used to call them, but then there was the rail fence, they made them into the crab fence or the shed fence, or then there was another one they called the draper fence around here. How it got the name of Draper, because there was a Draper man that started to build it.

Interviewer: When um- when farms were cleared and um, these roots of the trees were dugout and-so-on, they were sometimes used to make fences. Speaker: Oh y- oh, yes. Interviewer: Uh-huh. What were they called, those fences? Speaker: That's what I'm trying to think. Rail. Was it a rail fence we called it? Interviewer: Yes, I think the ones that you were speaking of that your father had were rail fences.

Interviewer: What about in the winter? You guys get a lot of snow up here? Speaker: Well, yes. (inc) we- by the- in November the old rail-road or the old rail fences would be covered by then with snow and 'course there's a like a saw-mill here in the village and farmers to make a living through the winter, they cut trees eh and logs and the trees and as kids we'd get to skate- sleighs ...

Speaker: Or walk over the fences. It would- Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker: You-know, like, if some of the fences weren't too high and they were the rail fences then. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Sometimes you'd walk right over the- the fen-- yeah. (laughs) Interviewer: Did you usually hang off the telephone wires or-anything? (laughs)

Speaker: Well throw the fork because if you stop suddenly, the fork might go in you. Interviewer: Oh the pitch fork. Speaker: Yeah, and laying down when th-- when we wh-- what- what- what stopped us, they ran through a- a rail fence and ah, there was a stump, a substantial stump and that- that stopped the ah, stopped the wagon and ah- Interviewer: Like (inc)- Speaker: Yeah, yeah and the- the horses of course broke the harness and they took off and- Interviewer: Your dad must have been mad (laughs).

Interviewer: Do you remember ever building a raft? Speaker: Oh yeah, we built a- we built rafts, we had to get logs that had ah floated down the river and s-- sometimes we'd go to the- the rail fences- Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: And this guy was with one time and he was starting to- (inc) the top logs off. And I said, "Oh, don't do that, the farmer will know that you'd been tearing his fences down and he'll be after us."

Speaker: I can't remember the reason why he took that fence down, but he took it down for some reason, whether he made the field bigger or- there was some reason. But he had me go back to- to rebuild it. Interviewer: My goodness. Speaker: And it was a five-rail-fence and that was a heavy fen-- it was hard to get that fifth rail down when you're all by yourself.

... he had met this woman from the States through some horse club down at- down at the club fair. And she come up and she seen all his fences and all the other old rail fences and she just had to have them. So I ended up going down there. Interviewer: So, did she have the rails? Or did you- Speaker: No they were shipped from here down. Interviewer: (gasps)

... so- we- you-know made sure everybody got dropped off at the right house. Ah, all- along that way- oh, 'cause that washouts, the road was completely covered in water in- in a couple of spots so we had got on to the rail fence and- and everybody hung on to the fence and you- unless you wanted to wade the water in the road but most of us didn't.

Speaker: Barn fires and-stuff as well too. So um- Interviewer: So your dad always took you along. Speaker: Well most of the time we got to go. Yeah, so- and it wasn't that you were able to do a whole lot but you-know sometimes when the rail fence was on fire, that's the least of their worries but somebody still needed to look after that or- you-know I remember being down at Ben-Harpering the night that their burn- burnt down there and they had dairy cattle.

But some of the other trees um grew right along the fence-line between the- the bush and the field so you could get up on the fence- on the rail fence and get up into the tree from there.

I would likely take them out and show them piles of zig-zagging stone in the bush. What used to be a field, the stones represent where the old crooked-rail fences were, where the farmers drew he stone off the field and piled them there and the fence has long rotted, the fields have grown back up in trees, and I would sit there and watch the revelation in their faces as they studied these things.

... it's all big motels now, at that time was hay field from the hay was up quite high so I went out in the field and tied them to an old rail fence and got them eating and ah, we didn't have a copy from deep and tried to talk to a lad- it was piles of transport pulling into- trying to hitch-hike a ride to London.