Meet some men who practice a very old trade. They're woodcutters who use the wood they cut from old trees to make old-fashioned wooden roofs.


FIONA BLACKWOOD: Graham Greene and John Graham are pretty fussy when it comes to shopping around for the best tree for shingles.

These days felling trees is not allowed.

So the pair work on salvaging wood left behind from forestry operations.

John Graham taught Graham Greene how to split a log for shingles about 10 years ago.

They've been good mates ever since.

What do you talk about when you sit around the fire.

GRAHAM GREENE: We usually stir each other up, actually.

Give each other a hard time.

JOHN GRAHAM: We get on real well together.

We talk a lot about the wood and that type of thing.

No, we get on well.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Both bushmen are pretty sharp with an axe as well as other traditional tools.

GRAHAM GREENE: This is an antique tool called a fro that would have been used by the old-timers 150 years ago.

There's nothing complicated about shingling and all you need really is a block of wood with a slot in it in which you can get a bit of leverage on your block of wood to split your shingles, so it's as simple as that.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: It's simplicity that's functional.

GRAHAM GREENE: They weather very well.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Graham Greene and his 69-year-old mentor are one of the few with the skills to shingle a roof.

GRAHAM GREENE: I guess we're a bit of a remnant because split timber used to be a major industry in Tasmania.

In the mid-1800s there were thousands of people splitting timber and it was the biggest part of the timber industry here to the tune of something like 15 million shingles exported every year.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: These days there's still plenty of work.

The pair are preparing to re-shingle the governor's secretary's residence at the Tasmanian Museum.

It's a bid to keep alive a Tasmanian tradition.

GRAHAM GREENE: We're the last ones of that tradition, really that are still doing it this way and still making a living out of it, so, I guess it is important to us to keep that going, and we just really enjoy it as well.

It's quiet, we love working hard, feel like we've done something at the end of the day and we're really satisfied.

JOHN GRAHAM: I enjoy the fresh air, and the smell of the bush and I've done a lot of bush work in me time.

It sort of gets in your blood and you want to keep on going right up till you're too old, too old to move.

GRAHAM GREENE: Yeah, it's a bit like that now, actually.

JOHN GRAHAM: I've got a bit of go in me yet. I still got a few years yet in me, that's the sort of life that I like.