After a woodchopping career spanning six decades, octogenarian Martin Conole will be inducted into the Australian Axeman’s Hall of Fame this month. Source: ABC News
But Mr Conole’s days of swinging axes are far from over.
He will be inducted during an Australia Day woodchopping event held annually at the Australian Axeman’s Hall of Fame in La Trobe, Tasmania — the site of the world’s first international woodchopping championship in 1891.
“It’s incredible really; I’m over the moon about it,” Mr Conole said of his forthcoming induction.
Born and raised on a farm in the green, rolling hills of Malanda, west of Cairns on the Atherton Tablelands, Martin ‘Marty’ Conole was a teenage boy when he first witnessed a competitive woodchop.
“My brothers, they were both timber men and I had a brother-in-law who was a contract scrub feller so I used to get a lot of hand-me-downs [axes],” Mr Conole said.
“I always just loved axes and woodchopping so when I first saw [a chop] when I was 14, after the war years, I just loved it from there on.”
As if born for the sport, Mr Conole won the novice division in the first competitive woodchop he ever entered.
A group of local timber workers had convened at the annual Butcher’s Creek School committee sports day and when one of them decided to enter the woodchop, Mr Conole jumped at the chance to challenge him.
“I couldn’t even afford a good axe in them days; I used to borrow axes off my old mate who was a woodchopper,” Mr Conole said. “My wife bought me my first axe.”
After his first winning ribbon at a woodchopping event in 1956, Mr Conole’s career as a competitive woodchopper blossomed and has since taken him around Australia and even to a few international competitions.
In 2007 he and his Australian teammates took home gold medals in the New Zealand Masters’ Games. But Mr Conole’s favourite woodchopping event happens to be in his home town, at the Malanda Show, where he has not missed a chop since 1954.
“This is my 62nd Malanda Show this year; at least it will be, if I make it that far,” he laughed.
