A Week's Gone Where? 04/05/09.

I can hardly believe that it's been a week since I last logged in here. I have no idea where the time has gone. Tuesday was work, so was Wednesday & Thursday.

Friday I remember. 06:00 start so I had time for a shower and breakfast before walking up the road to meet Sean with his big Mack truck, excavator and skid steer for the drive up to the farm and a 07:30 start. Sean's been working in excavation since he was sixteen. Initially for his dad Rob in the family business and subsequently himself after Rob retired. I recently got my my skid-steer ticket at NMIT but here's a guy who's been at the controls for 16 years and it shows. Don't reckon there's much he can't do with the damn thing.

While Sean cleaned up around the barn, I busied myself with removing wire and old fencing from the few remaining fence posts and before I'd finished he'd removed all the concrete and crap from the flat as well. Pretty impressive!

He kept going on the flat and worked on some additional landscaping while I started clearing up branches from the home paddock and adding them to the ever increasing pile. Was interested to see today an article in "The Phoenix" that Murrunindi Shire is to allow their ratepayers to burn off provided the piles are no more than 1 metre high by 1 metre wide. At that rate I would need to have a minumum of 10 -15 such heaps about 10 piles and that's just a beginning. I reckon they'll have a revolt in Murrundindi and at the moment I'm grateful to be in Nillumbik.

Speaking of Nillumbik, I was most impressed to be phoned on Friday and invited to attend a meeting with representatives from all the council's departments to discuss issues associated with rebuilding. Apparently I had registered for this some weeks ago. I didn't remember having done so but I am really impressed with this initiative and said so. Hope I'm still happy after the meeting.

While council matters are still close to mind I'm a bit frustrated to have found that we are probably going to have to replace our old septic tank which has worked perfectly well for the last 15 years at least and would presumably keep working for another 15. Apparently the rules are about to change. Why frustrated? Well about seven or eight weeks ago I met with a council guy who for the moment will remain nameless but readers with good memories can look him up.

Anyway I met with this representative of the health department to talk about what was required in order to live in a caravan on the site. One of the items we discussed and I remember it quite clearly was whether or not the septic tank had been damaged and whether we would be able to continue to use it. I was left with the clear notion that provided it wasn't damaged then there would be no problem.

It now seems that the rules have changed. If it's less than 3200l then it aint big enough and needs to be replaced. This information is apparently about to be published by council. It's a bit too obvious a pun but I'm so glad they are going to do this, I could really have been in the shit!

The council gives with the left and takes with the right. I will try to maintain a sense of balance and remind myself once again that this is an unprecedented crisis and our local government representatives and their staffs can't possibly have been expected to have anything like a contingency plan for something so unusual and unexpected as a bushfire. Enough irony... but I am still astonished that they were so unprepared.

Back to Friday and the farm. Ros was supposed to be bring us morning tea about ten but when I called her at about 10:45 she and the coffee were still in Eltham as there had been a minor altercation between Angus and a footpath on the way to school. The footpath won but it was only a temporary victory. Hot coffee and cake arrived with Phoebe and Ros was gratefully consumed.

We were just about to get back to work when Cait and her friend Nicole arrived with lunch and so there was nothing for it but to have lunch.

Can't really claim to be real farmers but the work ethic is pretty strong so we all went back to work. I spent nearly three hours digging out bits of the gate posts while Sean cleaned up the front yard with the skid-steer and Nicole and Cait moved branches, bricks and dug up a vegetable bed.

Sean very carefully and delicately manouvered the biggest log on the property into position and then watched in disbelief and anguish as it rolled away from the front of the bucket, over one of my newly planted Manchurian Pears, straight over the top of a star picket, paused then headed straight for the dam before it swung sideways and rolled ponderously towards the Western fence, stopping about 10 metres short. Apart from the horrified look on Sean's face it was the funniest thing I've seen in years.

After catching our breath Sean and I removed a couple of star pickets and undid the tapes so he and the ski-steer could roll the bloody thing safely down the hill to the monster log pile he had already created. Hopefully, Grocon will take the lot.

It's 11:59 and I'm outa here! Cheers