Instant log cabin

By Kath Gannaway
A TEA BREAK turned out to be a lucky break for Healesville man Jade Watson.
Mr Watson, 30, had just moved from his computer desk to the kitchen of his Maroondah Highway house when tons of sawlogs came crashing to within a metre of where he had been sitting.
A log truck travelling down the Black Spur rolled as it rounded the corner opposite the gates to Maroondah Dam, sending the massive logs flying across the front lawn, smashing into the front room of the house, and the verandah. Just seconds before Mr Watson had been working at the desk which faces the road.
Looking out through a gaping hole in the wall at machinery removing the logs, one by one, Mr Watson was grateful he wasn’t hurt but devastated to see his computer equipment smashed and scattered under a layer of glass and splintered timber.
“I just went to get a cup of tea and heard the noise of all the logs smashing into the house and knew exactly what was happening,” he said.
The tea-break was a random decision. “I don’t usually make tea when I’m working,” he said.
His parents Richard and Barbara Watson, who rent the house, arrived home minutes later to flashing lights, a front yard covered in logs, a virtually demolished facade, but, thankfully, a son, unscathed in what but for a “Tetley’s moment” could have been a very different homecoming.
The couple said they were certainly shocked, but not entirely surprised by the crash.
“We have been told the same thing happened about 10 years ago,” Richard Watson told the Mail on Monday and admitted the family is a little more apprehensive now about passing traffic.
He said while the volume of trucks coming past their front door was diminishing with the clean-up work slowing down around Marysville, they were uneasy following Friday’s incident.
“When you’re lying in bed and you hear the trucks coming down with their air brakes on at 3.30 in the morning, you just think ‘Gees … I hope he makes it around the corner,” he said.
Jade Watson was able to be more philosophical about the experience. “I guess the lesson to be learned is just don’t live on a corner where massive log trucks go past all day long,” he noted. “That’s about all you can take out of it. That, and relying on your sixth sense to tell you when to have a cup of tea.”
He wasn’t quite as philosophical about the interruption to his work.
“Basically, I’m really annoyed. I was right in the middle of using a new music program, now all I have left is the manual,” he said.
The driver of the truck was shaken, but also escaped injury.
SES, CFA and police attended, working with timber industry workers to clear the log spill.
The Mail was unable to contact Healesville Police or the Traralgon-based logging company before going to press in regard to the circumstances of the crash.