An insight into the construction of the famed Woakwine Cutting near Beachport is one of the upcoming program highlights of the Millicent-based South East Family History Group.
Local retailer Christine Agnew will address its September 22 meeting and explain the actions of her late father Murray McCourt.
The Woakwine Cutting is an outstanding example of engineering.
Accomplished by just Mr McCourt and his workman Dick McIntyre, a D7 tractor was used to make a cutting through the Woakwine Range to drain the McCourt family swampland for farming.
The project began in May 1957 and took three years to complete.
The length of the cutting is one kilometre and the depth at the deepest point is 28.34 metres.
The width of the cutting at the top is 36.57 metres and three metres at the bottom.
There were 276,000 cubic metres of material removed using a new D7 tractor over a total of 5000 hours.
The other topics for the monthly SEFHG meetings relate to the wool industry and radio broadcasts.
Retired Millicent wool broker Bill Cull will be the guest speaker at the August 25 meeting.
There will be no guest speaker on July 28 with SEFHG members asked instead to share their memories of such vintage radio shows as “Blue Hills” and “Dad and Dave”.
