Solutions
The situation had grown so frustrating by 1878 that the South Australian government offered a reward of £200 to anyone who could develop an effective mechanical stump puller; although myriad devices were developed, none proved to be a breakthrough success. Many of these machines were trialled in contests near Gawler in the same year, but none were as effective as three skilled axemen.
Pending the development of an effective machine, a technique known as mullenizing (after a farmer from Wasleys named Charles Mullens) became popular as a means of clearing the scrub. Mullenizing involved dragging a heavy roller over roughly cleared ground to crush young shoots; the field was then burnt, and a spiked log was run over the ground, and a crop of wheat sown. The next season, the stubble and any mallee regrowth was again burnt, and eventually the mallee died, though stumps remained underground.
Read more about this topic: Stump-jump Plough
Famous quotes containing the word solutions:
“Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
“Those great ideas which come to you in your sleep just before you awake in morning, those solutions to the world’s problems which, in the light of day, turn out to be duds of the puniest order, couldn’t they be put to some use, after all?”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)