Question: What is a trebuchet?
Answer: A medieval military catapult for hurling heavy stones

Up until a few months ago, I had no idea what a trebuchet was until a good friend of my Hubsband’s (who should have known better and shall remain nameless) emailed around an ad advertising a trebuchet that was for sale. He did this as a bit of a joke, but Hubs thought it would be a GREAT idea to get a few mates to pitch in and buy the thing. Why? To fling stuff in the park behind our house of course!!

So the planning began and after a few false starts, a trip was made by one of Hubsband’s other crazy friends to pick the thing up. Upon arrival however, they saw how HUGE this contraption was and realised they had bitten of more treb than they could chew. Now when I say huge, I mean huge:

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The dimensions are:
Width: 2m
Length: 2.2m
Height: 5m (including the “throwing arm”)

After some negotiations, crazy friend instead purchased the prototype that the guy used to build the larger one which was much more manageable:

By around 2pm on that lovely Sunday afternoon, about 20 blokes (not including the original nameless friend who saw the ad in the first place!) in various medieval get-up had descended upon our back yard and were keen to fling! We headed to the park and proceeded to set up the treb as well as a target to hit. It has a range of about 30 meters so that was a bit less scary than the original 100m range of the larger model.

A fun time was had by all, and once the beer and bbq had wrapped up and the light was fading, of course it was decided to set fire to things and fling them!

Thankfully the police remained blissfully unaware of the event and the trebuchet is sitting quietly in Hubsband’s Mum’s garage.

Til we fling again….