Thursday 1st We had several showers during the day. Joe got the young bullocks up and drew out 45 rails and several loads of posts.
Samuel & Joe continued putting up the fence and William & Tom continued splitting and sharpening rails.
Friday 2nd It was showery all day. Samuel & Joe continued putting up the fence, William & Tom went on splitting rails. Joe went out to get the bullocks up, but returned without finding them.
Saturday 3rd It was very showery all day. Samuel & Joe continued putting up the fence, William & Tom went on splitting rails.
Joe got the bullocks up (the youngest pair) and drew out 43 Rails and some posts. The roads are very bad now to haul on. I went down to Mr Anderson’s in the afternoon and found that the “Enterprise No 2” had not arrived from Auckland on account of a gold field having broken out in the Firth of Thames and she is taking passengers down to it, one day this week she took about 100 passengers at 10/- per head.
McKenzie came up in the morning from Auckland in the “Ring Dove“.
Sunday 4th It was rather showery today. I went over to Mrs Kirkbrides in the afternoon. The cutter “Wangarei” called in the harbour on her way from Auckland to Wangarei to put James Greenwood ashore.
Monday 5th The men began fencing at the bottom of the clearing. Joe got the old pair of bullocks up in morning and continued drawing out rails, he left the bullocks up all night and fed them on straw.
Tuesday 6th The men continued fencing. Joe continued drawing out rails with the old bullocks.
A party of surveyors came to cut the line between John Kempt‘s land and mine. The surveyors name is Trageir and lives at Mahurangi and the young man who has the contract to cut the lines is a Mr Wyatt who’s father lives at the Kaipara flats. Mr Trageir & Mr Wyatt slept at Mr Wyatt‘s house and the two men slept here.
Wednesday 7th The men continued fencing. Joe got the young pair of bullocks up and continued to draw out rails. The surveyors cut the line between John Kempt‘s land & mine.
Thursday 8th The surveyors returned home to Mahurangi in the morning. Joe went out to get the bullocks up but could not find them. The men fell the Kauri tree on John Kempt‘s land in the morning.
Friday 9th We measured the fence in the morning, there is 24½ Chains. Tom, William & Joe put up a small piece of the fence in the afternoon. Samuel & I measured a fence that I am thinking of having erected on my opposite boundary fence that has just been surveyed, there is 10¾ Chains on the boundary line and 3 Chains to join it to the orchard fence. The men commence sawing up the Kauri tree in the afternoon.
Saturday 10th The men finished sawing up the Kauri tree and blasted all the logs, they have got a post log & two logs of rails. Joe got the old pair of bullocks up in the morning and drew out 60 rails.
In this volume (18 Jun 1866 – 31 Oct 1867) of Clarke’s diary, the entry for Saturday 10th finishes at the top of page 158. The following page (a facing page) is blank apart from the heading ‘August’ and the page number which he has written as ‘158’ instead of ‘159’. The next page, over leaf, is totally blank. Charles Clarke then continues the diary on the following page (another facing page) which he numbers ‘160’ (Should be ‘161’) and a main heading of ‘October’ followed by his usual daily entry format starting at ‘October 4th’.