Mowing and Spraying

We set aside today to get a head start on what is likely to be one of our grassiest years.

We focused on Bridges and Blackberries. Where possible before applying some herbicide, we’ve flail mowed the Blackberries. We had great success with this method last time, with many of our harder blackberry infestations now well dead.

The other reason for focusing around the bridges is to reduce the chance of damage from fire, as we’re sure you can appreciate, wooden bridges and fires don’t go well together, even small fires can lead to big damage. Where appropriate we’ve cut the grass before spraying.

All the bridges and crossings around Castlemaine were treated.

In between quiet moments of spraying, the flail mower has made a serious dent on the mowing task, still plenty to go but certainly far less onerous than it was before.

There will likely still be a second cut in most areas, however the spray we’ve applied to the weeds should mean we’re not trying to battle quite as thicker foliage in the next cut.

There’s still plenty of off track stuff to do, however today proved the ground is actually still very soft! So another week or two before we can tackle everything.

Tomorrow’s crew will jump back to ballast trains, we’ll meet at Maldon at 8am or out at Muckleford from 8.30am.