Progress for 2009 in Pictures

Well it's been a very busy couple of months - probably a thousand words not written and a million or so thoughts many best left forgotten - I have no idea at all where the time has gone - I seem to be both perpetually busy and tired, without a lot to show for it.

There's a few positive things to say at this pre-Xmas time.

The Baptist Church in Diamond Valley has been putting on free dinners on Monday evenings for those impacted by the fires. We've been to a couple and more recently attended a Xmas function there.

Out of the blue or perhaps more accurately the black, I had a visit from Shane who lives with his family in a van at the top of Bald Spur. He's been driving past for months and decided just as a gesture of goodwill and solidarity to drop in with half a dozen beers.

A couple Wednesday's ago when it was 30+ in the shade and I was fortunately sitting in the relative cool of the van on an international conference call, when a bloke who's name I think is either Jimmy or Robbie from the first house in Mitton's Bridge Road dropped in to see if I was OK and needed to be cooler. "Just drop in if you'd like", he said and noticing I was on the phone was gone!

Can't complain about these neighbours!

Finally at least for the moment - here's a link to the latest hous construction photo's. The boys have finished for the year. A bit behind schedule but we're pretty happy with progress.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/Nossida/HouseBuildingToEOY#


We are having a quiet Xmas and hope that yours is everything you you wish for - Cheers Q

Bricks - Brickies & A Retaining Wall

Bricks Waiting for a brickie!

Lance marks the spot

"The Brickies" - father Pete & son Jai would have to be classic exponents of their trade. Pete has been laying bricks for 49 years and there's only one way to do the job - his! I'm very impressed with their effort.

A Bit of a Coincidence??

A Visit from Melbourne Water - 48 Hours after I had turned my back on my neighbour, I was working on my PC when there was a loud knock on the caravan wall. Had to be a visitor, practically nobody I know would knock.

Turned out to be a polite young fellow wearing Melbourne Water colours, who said that they'd received a complaint and were obliged to investigate same. Appears that someone had complained that I was carrying out roadworks which were having a detrimental effect on the Diamond Creek some hundreds of metres away. When I suggested that perhaps the complainant might be my neighbour as she is the only one in cooee who can (a) see my roadworks and (b) has the Diamond Creek running through her property. Not surprisingly, the Melbourne Water chap was unwilling to name any names.

I explained that essentially what I had been doing was replacing an old culvert which had been destroyed by the combined activities of Vic Roads, Vic Police & the Australian Army, post bushfire and offered to show him the photographs I had taken showing the damage and location. He was keen to see my pics and asked if he could have copies of two of them. I immediately emailed them to him and was pleased to have him say that he'd take a couple of photos of the new culvert and indicated that it would be very unlikely if I heard any further from Melbourne Water.

I went back to work.

A Mixed Bag of a week or two

The end of the Pool Saga!

I finished at 01:00 thinking I'd done 99% of the job and here I am at o6:30 next morning still deconstructing (Derrida where art thou?). Finally finished at 11:00 which means that it took me about 7.5 hours to pull it apart. I don't think that it took me that long to put it together. Still it's all in the back of the LR and will shortly be at Cait's.

A Bloody Great Hole!

A 21 tonne excavator operated by Daniel who looks about 19 is working along side me but his progress is fantastic. At the end of the day there's a pad for the house and a trench for the footing for the retaining wall. Before he's finished for the day Daniel relocates several truck loads of soil to create a berm along the HK road boundary. In two hours he's done about 10 times what i've done in two days with the Kubota and saved me about two weeks of effort.

What Drives this woman?

We have lived here for a bit over 15 years and during all that time one of our next door neighbours whilst constantly claiming to want to be a good neighbour has seemingly made it her business to make our lives a misery. Her dog has killed our chooks. She has complained about the blackberry which has grown along our common fence whilst having acres of blackberry of her own which has gone unchecked since her husband died a few years ago. Her inability to maintain a clear area along our common boundary made a significant contribution to the loss of our house. Through all this and much more I have steadfastly maintained that tolerance and understanding will eventually overcome her territorial demands. Most recently I have been keeping an eye on her place and checking that anybody on the property is entitled to be there. I have also offered to cut down the dead trees adjacent to our boundary and arrange for our local CFA to supervise it's burning. This offer was declined.

And to the point of this. Recently seeing that she was on site and having lost the details of Blaze aid fencing contractor which she wanted to use I approached and asked if she could again provide the information as I had found a supplier of second hand pine poles and wanted to know how many would be required. She agreed to provide this and then said that she had recently seen a copy of my business card and was I intending to run a business. I said yes, forbearing to mention that I have been running a business from home for about 5 years and wondering where this was going. Ever optimistic I thought initially that she might be interested in my Garden design consultancy but soon learned that she was actually concerned about how many clients I might have and where they would park. As we were standing in the government road which provides access to three properties I suggested that they could park pretty much where they liked provided they did not block access to our respective private access roads. She continued this line of questioning and asked agin whereabouts they would park to which I responded that if necessary they would park in an appropriate area which I would provide.

Her response was that she had moved to the country for peace and quiet and I was about to spoil it all, presumably with all the traffic and visitors I might attract. I remind the reader that my business Little Wood Consulting is a Garden Design Consultancy. I should be so lucky as to have three people a week turn up! I was absolutely gobsmacked and when she repeated her assertion that I would spoil the peace and quiet of her country existence, I said "... that is crap! I'm out of here and turning on my heel I walked away seething.

I am completely over this woman and for only the third time in my life have decided that she is a person with whom I wish to have absolutely minimum contact and preferably none! I simply do not understand what drives her but I am reminded of one of the several interactions between Mr Winston Churchill and Lady Astor in which Lady Astor says. "If you were my husband, I'd poison you" to which Winston replies, "And If I were your husband, I'd happily take it!"

A Bit of a Panic!

On Sunday I was moving crusher dust from the delivery piles to the tank pad that Sean had cleared for me when I decided to check the diameter. I was a bit surprised to find that it was about a metre short of the 10.1 m required. Monday was spent rectifying this and by nearly 6:00 pm I'd done and had enough. The level wasn't too bad but I thought it probably wasn't as good as the installers would require so I called my friend Richard a landscape architect and asked if he could give me a hand with the levels the following day. He agreed to bring up his laser level the following morning which I thought would give me a day to rectify any misalignment.

Panic set in when I called the tank supplier to ask for an extra day and discovered that I was two days out and the installation team was on route. Richard arrived at almost exactly the same and instead of having time for "white with two sugar" was immediately cast in the role of levelling supervisor as I shaved and moved and crusher dust from one area to another. I guess it could have been a disaster but in fact he did a terrific job and with the levels set he departed coffee-less to his next appointment while the tank construction team got on with the job.

It looks terrific and I am most grateful to Richard and the boys from STS Tanks.

21/10/2009 We Are Rebuilding - At Last!

Michael our builder has been saying "two weeks" for about 8 weeks or thereabouts, so when he said on Monday that they'd probably start on Wedesday, frankly I didn't really expect anything to happen.

Barking dogs finally got through to my brain which was focused on actually trying to earn an honest day's dollar with IBM, so I walked up to the home paddock to see what they were carrying on about. To my surprise there was movement at the station and the boys from Edgebuild were sliding from the tray ... they weren't really but everyone is allowed a bit of doggerel now and then.

Actually they'd set out the levels and were painting in guides for the excavator who was going to start in the morning which meant I had to remove the swimming pool.

Well it's now 01:12 and I've done 99% of the job - the rest can wait until sparrow's. I'm going to finish this beer and try for 4-5 hours sleep. The excavator with enormous machine arrived on Wed afternoon and is starting work at 07:00 so I have to get cracking before then!

It's been a busy and tiring day but what a ripper! The other good thing is that my second client has committed!

Bed beckons - and I'm already asleep - Cheers!

YAY!

Council have approved the building permit for the house!

Breaking Ground but Not Bones

Breaking Ground

The title apropos of nothing in particular has recalled the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk's .."Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread!" There will be a context shortly, but to the title and its real meaning or at least what I meant when I wrote it.

We have ordered our 110,000 litre tank and of course need somewhere to put it. There are very few flat places at 2335 other than where we intend to put the barn so on Thursday, our excavating friend Sean arrived with his excavator and created one. During the dig we discovered that a large area in the centre of the tank pad was quite squidgy. It was a bit like standing on clay coloured jelly and probably the closest thing to quicksand that I've seen. If you moved your feet up and down, they just sank deeper. Created a bit of a panic about whether the effort had been in vain until I rang the tank guys and discovered that it would be OK provided I used crusher dust rather then the initially recommended sand. Mind you that silver lining had a cloud, I don't know what 13m2 of washed sand costs but that volume of crusher dust added another $1,740 to the cost of the tank.

It's still a positive outcome because even though it's only for the tank, there is at last some building activity! Sean also interred a couple of large drainpipes to channel our overflowing dam water under the 2335B road. I reckon we're contributing kilolitres of water to the Diamond Creek. It augurs well for a dam if I can get the required permit.

NOTE TO SELF - GET ON WITH THE PERMIT APPLICATION!!

More Breaking Ground

After conversations with a number of people about insurance payouts I decided to have a very close look at the policy document and under the section headed "Additional benefits", discovered that in addition to sums for, architect costs for a new dwelling, tree replacement, clean up and rubble removal and site clearing there was a a formula for rental payments for up to 12 months. I had previously spoken to the assessor who had told me that we were not eligible for either clean up costs or rental and had taken him at his word. Bastard never even bothered to mention the architect or trees. Turns out that he was wrong and from my perspective the insurance company less than ethical in handling of our case.

I called our insurance case manager and put my findings to him. His response was that the case was closed and he would have to retrieve it from archive in order to review my claim. After a week having heard nothing I called again and was more than a little pleased to discover that we were in fact entitled to a sum slightly in excess of $40,000. I forbore from asking the obvious question although in writing this with John Fane on the radio in the background, I wonder if perhaps it would be worth raising the question publicly as I'm sure I'm not the only one who has inadvertently been contributing to the profits of the insurance industry. I'll ponder that for a bit.

And now to the Not Broken Bones

A significant chunk of the insurance money has gone to the purchase of a new Kubota tractor. My old Kubota went along with everything else on the 7th and the new one in addition to being more powerful and quite a bit more technically advanced, comes with a front end loader, mid-mount mower and a backhoe. I elected to upgrade the bucket to a 4-in-1 which also allows objects to be picked up, not have the mower and replace it with a slasher when I discovered that it would cost about the same as repairing my old slasher. I also decided to get a post hole digger and finish up with the all singing all dancing small farm tractor.

It was delivered by Bruce from Yarra Glen Mowers and Tractors, a very pleasant and helpful chap and I spent a couple of hours after work day learning how to drive it and began the relocation of a large pile of roadbase and turning it into a new road across the drainage pipes. I felt very pleased with myself.

Thursday Evening was very pleasant if a bit on the chilly side. Newly married friends from Nth Warrandyte, Jenny and Grant came for a Thai dinner which we bought from Tikki at the general store in St Andrews. Grant and I found ourselves standing around the fire with Willo listening to a very detailed explanation of the many and varied levels of one of the adventures on his game computer. We were both fascinated by the never ending stream of information in vivid detail which he recounted, barely pausing to draw breath. So much enthusiam is truly amazing and infectious.

On Fridayday I started constructing an access road up to the tank pad so that I could move all the crusher dust.

I'd completed about two thirds of it, when adding another bucket load of wettish clay loam to the growing pile I discovered that no matter how careful one may think one is being there is always the unexpected ... with bucket raised, I dropped a rear wheel into a soft patch which slewed me sideways the front wheel hit the pile of clay and I discovered what the point of no return was. My reptilian brain leaped into action and screamed get out of here you idiot but fortunately the umpteen times I'd rehearsed this eventuality on my old tractor, kicked the thinking part into action and extracted the required memory. With feet flat on the floor and my hands gripping the steering wheel we slowly toppled over and came to rest lying sideways on the ROPS. Man was I pissed off as I reached up, turned the ignition key off, unbuckled my seatbelt and clambered out of the seat.

Ros was out so the first thing was to get the tractor back on its wheels before she got back. After a quick check over and discovering no apparent damage I removed the back hoe and then realised that I couldn't lift the bloody thing. Off to get the Landrover and see if it could help. Nope not high enough and no winch either. Bit of a bother because I didn't think that there was anything it couldn't do.

Fortunately my neighbour Graeme arrived, having driven past and nearly getting home before realising that the tractor was on its ear. With the assistance of his trusty Bobcat we moved the back-hoe and then lifted the tractor to its more usual upright position. With my grateful thanks Graeme went back to his Friday afternoon's work and I set about trying to work out how to get the back-hoe back in place. Nearly forgot to mention that Ros came home while Graeme and I were getting the tractor back on its feet and was very relieved to find that Willo was in the van watching a video.

Back hoe back on and back on the job although for a while very carefully and with a new shorter approach road!