The Convict Fence Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(small)
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The cache IS at the listed coordinates! Bring your own pen / pencil.
The container is weighted down and lives in the hollow of the post. It contains a waterproof log & may have NO pencil. There is a little room for trackables but they WILL get wet. Please replace the cache & cord so that they are hidden from view & so that the cache will stay for a good, long time.
The 'Fence', now just a line of jarrah posts, was originally built in 1866 to aid in navigation of barges carrying timber from the upper reaches of the Canning River, in an area known as Mason's Landing (see geocache) , down to the deeper water at Salter Point and Mount Henry. From here the barges could be towed steam tugs to where they were needed.
"In summer time even the shallow-draught barges often grounded in the shallows and Mason found it difficult to meet export contracts. He conceived the idea of employing convict labour to dredge a channel in the shallow section between Mason's Landing and the deeper water downstream."
"It was claimed that the 'fence' was needed to hold back the mud thrown up by the channel diggers." It has also been suggested that "the barrier may have been built to encourage scouring of the a channel by winter flow. " "It was a least partially successful for this purpose".
"The 'fence' was reported to have been constructed of jarrah poles backed by casuarina logs and boughs felled on the nearby banks. The tops of the piles were linked by a 10cm x 10cm planking."
"Documents lodged with State Archives indicate that convicts were required to stand waist-deep in water digging up the mud with spades and pitching it over to the shore side of the 'fence'." "These men are working in the water the entire day frequently up to their Waist and from the nature of their work digging the mud up with spades their whole bodies must be wet the whole working day."
"By the 1890s the lot of the prisoners employed on channel clearing work had obviously improved. For the 1892-97 project the Public Works Department used a dredge, the Black Swan, to deepen the channel. The work was still performed by prison labour, but evidently conditions were not nearly as primitive as they had been twenty or thirty years earlier." "The wreck of the barge is still against the fence".
"It seems clear that the old convict-built 'fence' in the Canning River does form part of the existing structure. Unfortunately it is not possible to identify precisely which sections of the present barrier were constructed by convicts in 1866 and which were added during repairs in 1869 and 1887-88 when convict labour was not used; nor is it possible to discover just how much of the earlier structure was incorporated into the Public Works Department project of 1892-97".
It seems that for the above reason no conservation work has been done & the current structure is left to decay even though any part of the fence is now well over 100 years old.
"Although individual items within the current fence line have been altered over time, the integrity of the line of the remaining fence position since 1866 seems to be very good. Nothing remains of the Casuarina walling, but the spacing of the remaining posts gives a good indication of the way in which the fence was structured."
Most of the information above are direct quotes from "THE CONVICT-BUILT 'FENCE' IN THE CANNING RIVER" by D. Hutchinson & Dianne Davidson - published 30 November 1979. With additional information from "Register of Heritage Places - Assessment Documentation, Convict Fence", 02/09/1997.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Znl or orybj gur jngre yvar ng uvtu gvqr.
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