by John Wells
One of the serious crimes at our place was using an axe to cut fencing wire. If you put the wire across the blade and hit it with a hammer where it crosses, it cuts easily and cleanly, but it was not good for edge of the axe. I saw dad do it quite a few times and that was alright by him, but woe betide anyone else who did it.

Burning out broken handles and replacing them – spokeshaving the handle to a smooth, tight fit before the burning, then bringing the axehead out of the coals, dropping it into a bucket of water to cool it quickly and keep the steel tempered. Then it would be warmed again, but only to a degree, so that the metal had expanded a little, and the handle then be hammered into the oval hole through the axehead. A narrow wedge would be driven up into the bottom end of the handle to spread the wood a little and make the fit really tight.

When I was about eight dad decided I was old enough to use the axe and took me to the woodheap to be taught the basics. I was thrilled to bits. After all, this meant that I was nearly grown up, or so I thought. Suddenly it was me splitting all the firewood, and carrying it down to the woodbox. It was a fair old walk and it took about 10 armfuls to fill the woodbox.

Dad brought the axe to me a few days later and pointed out the damage I had done to the handle just above the head by missing with the blade. He wound fencing wire really tightly round the six inches or so of the handle, starting right at the axehead. Doing damage to the axe was not a good idea.

We also had a tomahawk for cutting and splitting small wood for kindling, and it was a tomahawk, not a hatchet. I'm not sure anyone ever used that word in those days. The tomahawk is of course a little axe, like a runt that failed to grow.

Most farmhouses then had woodboxes, small boxes built onto an outside wall as near as possible to the chimney, and thus to the kitchen fire and the stove. There was a lift-up lid on the outside and a door which opened into the kitchen.

Where I came undone with the woodbox, and I remember this as if it was yesterday was an occasion where I was n trouble something I'd done, or been successfully blamed for by one of my brothers. I'm sure I was the only child in Australia who ran away from home that day, but I was probably the only one who then hid in the woodbox, where it was warm.

A little later – perhaps 15 minutes but it seemed much longer, Euan, the brother born after me, asked Mum tearfully whether we shouldn't be looking for me. She replied, and I can still hear her saying it, "He's alright. He's hiding in the woodbox and it is nice and warm in there. He'll come out before teatime." I did, too. My grand gesture was reduced to low farce. That happened seventy years ago and I still remember it clearly.

Back to the topic. One of the uses of the axe, almost a ceremonial occasion, was cutting down a small pine tree to go inside as our Christmas tree. In fact, we had no pine trees on the farm so it was always a Cypress branch, and Dad could stand up in the tree and still swing an axe neatly and effectively. In my mind it was always a huge branch that would come crashing down, but the memories I have from childhood do not always quite coincide with the facts. The branch had to fit into the dining room, after all.

We didn't have star pickets (steel fence posts in the real world, but star pickets in the army) in those days but the back of an axe would have worked a treat on them, You can't bang a peg or a post into the ground with a chainsaw. If you wanted to tether a cow in a particular spot you would have to bang in a peg to hold the end of the chain that did not have a cow on it.

We used goats to eat down blackberries and ferns, and the billygoat had to be tethered because he was really aggressive. Again, an axe would hammer into the ground a peg to hold him. Sometimes we thought of using the axe on him, but Dad would have gone crook.

There was the issue of killing hens that were bound for the pot. Dad, or his father, would hold the chooks head on the chopping block, eyes front. They would then draw a straight chalk line from the chook's beak, straight ahead. The chook would lie still, mesmerised, and that meant a quick, clean cut was possible. I have among the old family photographs a picture of me beheading my first chook when I was in Grade Four. I was being taught to it properly, and humanely.

That sounds a bit horrible but this was on a farm and the chooks were not pets. They provided eggs until they couldn't and then we ate them. Simple, really, but one more role for the axe.
Children accepted things for what they were and counselling was unheard of. Remember "Oranges and lemons and the last verse as the 'victim' was caught.
Here comes a candle
To light you to bed
And here comes a chopper
To chop off your head
I've been slightly facetious in these two 'axe stories' but they are true. I have not even got to the woodchopping competitions. In an older, simpler time, sometimes called the 'good old days' a good, sharp axe was a vitally important tool. I admit the chainsaw is a lot faster and easier to use on a tree trunk – those 'good old days' were often not quite as good as we might think.