WEARING gumboots, Driza-Bones, hats, gloves and other wet-weather gear, the volunteers slid around in the mud for three long days. While many others spent the cold Anzac Day long weekend inside at home, nearly 30 volunteers toiled for a wet weekend in the bush near Marysville.
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They dug post holes, carried timber and sank posts into the ground. Despite the pouring rain and bleak, cold conditions, by the end of the weekend a strong start had been made on the new horse yards.
Two months later the Andersons Mill horse yards are open for business, giving horse-riding enthusiasts a protected place to rest their horses and camp as they walk through the bush. The old yards, which were about five kilometres from Marysville into the bush, were destroyed by the bushfire that swept through Marysville on Black Saturday.
The yards are on the Bicentennial National Trail, a 5330 kilometre trail running along the Great Dividing Range from Healesville to Cooktown in Far North Queensland.
The yards have been rebuilt from timber salvaged from trees that were burnt in the bushfire. The labour has come from volunteers and work crews from the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
Alexandra and District Horseman's Association president Jo-Anne Kasch said wire horse yards were constructed at the site after the 1939 bushfire.
That fire destroyed the local sawmill, which was owned by the Anderson brothers. Mrs Kasch said the horse yards were used by trail riders from across Australia and were an important tourism asset to Marysville and the Murrindindi Shire.
''We've travelled all over Victoria and I don't think I've ever seen a set of public horse yards as good as these,'' she said. ''Everybody needs to use these as the benchmark, because they are just fabulous.''
DSE fire recovery project officer Murray Sutton said tables and chairs, barbecue facilities and a new toilet block would also be built at the site. The project is being jointly funded by the Victorian and federal governments' bushfire recovery plan.
The old sawmill at the site used to be part of the Wilks Creek settlement, which in its heyday also had a school, football oval and many houses.
Some of the settlement's history is still scattered across the bush floor. Just a few metres from the new yards neat bricks stand in a broken square, perhaps the remnants of a fireplace at an old cottage. A few metres deeper into the bush, past a few old pieces of bent roofing iron, lies another sign of old lives - an empty bathtub.
Like the residents of this old town it's not fancy or pretentious, but a simple tin structure.
Nearby, over the other side of the driveway, much deeper into the bracken fern and young mountain ash trees and wattles competing vigorously for moisture and sunlight, more history is on display if you are prepared to fight your way to it.
Huge concrete footings of the old sawmill that were fully exposed by the Black Saturday fire are gradually being reclaimed by the bush.
On the ground nearby are rusty wire cables much thicker than a person's finger, an assortment of pieces of cast iron used in the mill, a heavy gear wheel at least 60 centimetres tall with chunky teeth, and, fittingly, an old horseshoe.
