The Sisyphean Track

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who tried to cheat death and the Gods punished him by making him push a rock up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down before it got to the top, and he had to repeat the task for all eternity; hence the term "sysyphean". In more modern  times you have the painting of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, once you've finished painting you have to start again. Well here at the Curney, we have a combination of the two - keeping the track from the road down to the farm repaired!

The track itself is just over 750 yards ong, and though "only"  the last 250 yards is actually on our land, for all intents and purposes I get to keep it all repaired - the farmer who owns the remaining 500 yards only drives tractor over it and they don't mind pot holes. The original track was constructed out of rock and crushed stone, long before the days of modern farm machinery and cars. Unfortunately it is prone to potholes appearing on a regular basis, and once they appear they rapidly get worse. I've tried various methods of repair, none of which seem to last for very long; you really need a deepish pothole which allows the infill material a chance to bind together when compacted. Unfortunately the deeper the pothole the more jarring and lengthy is the journey down the track! My  preferred repair technique  uses road planings (produced when old road surfaces are dug up and put through a crusher) and then compressed into the pothole using a "wacker". Unfortunately these are no longer available and we have to use  crushed stone which does not bind as well.

Besides the laborious task and tedium of filling in the potholes (a typical count would be +300), for some reason I've had a "few incidents" while filling in potholes - see photo bottom right below. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the time I caught the lever which tips the trailer while driving along and dumped half a trailer load of scalpings on the track - where I didn't want them. Even more unfortunately my neighbouring farmer was there to witness the act.

Early attempt at filing using scalpings and cement - not very successful and expensive.

Using road planning, about half way!

Finally finished, end of drive by the road, the red arrow shows where the top right photo was taken from. Time to start all over again.

There's a story behind this picture, a good one, but not enough space here to do it justice.