Today is always when you remember that you forgot to write something yesterday about what happened the day before... and so it goes.
Sunday started as a bad day for me. Mostly I think because I'd been up to the farm on Saturday and taken all the pictures which you've doubtless looked at and they'd had time to percolate through my brain which somehow seemed to have drained what little colour there was from them. As though to quote Ros on the first day we returned together, "Its like driving from a colour movie into a black and white one" And partly because I spent an hour or so early on Sunday morning watering the trees and few remaining plants with water from the dam via a newly purchased fire-hose powered by my faithful old Korean fire-pump. With all the black & grey charcoal and dust which covers everything, soaking the flower beds, dessicated shrubs and the two lebanese cedars, seemed like trying to water the sahara and with little new water in sight and nothing to catch and guide it into the surviving concrete water tank if the bloody rain did fall, it all seemed somewhat gloomy. A bloke wouldn't want to get depressed!
Apart from that, it was hard to stay wondering about whether the dam was half empty or half full, particularly after I'd noticed that the almost totally blackened plum tree upon which I'd spent so much time pruning and had thought gone forever was bursting into leaf all over the place. I think in fact I'd shown it to Ros in amazement on Saturday but the memory was gone until just a few seconds ago.
Sunday afternoon I sat down and jumped into blogging for the first time. Mostly because I wanted to capture and continue our story from the point where Paul left off and make it available to all those who were interested in our survival and wanted to know what the hell we were going to do next. I also didn't want to send and respond to innumerable emails, so a blog seemed like a reasonable way to go.
Over the years I've kept and destroyed or lost numerous journals and in one sense this is a continuation of that process. I have no idea how long I will continue but even in three days it's become a process I quite look forward to engaging with. It would be untruthful to say that it doen't matter if anyone else reads it.
To be frank I encourage people to comment if they should be so inclined. I'd quite like this to become a reasonably interactive space, so your response, thoughts and comments are most welcome.
Barnstorming
On Sunday afternoon Ros & I talked about building a new barn. I think we'd like it to be constructed of wood and hope that the Council doesn't have knee jerk reaction to the idea. What we're thinking about is to clear the existing site and locate the new barn inside our actual cadastral boundary instead of halfway across the road alignment where it's probably been for more than a 100 years.
We have a 99 year lease on the road easement and on second thoughts I'm beginning to wonder why we'd change the location. Will have to chat with Ros about this.
The exact location will be determined in due course but the primary reason for wanting to build it is to have some way of catching rain and storing tools and equipment while we are living on site in a caravan which is to be lent to us by the Reynolds of Sydney.
Yesterday I spoke with the only Victorian wooden barn-building organisation I could find on Google and downloaded some brochures and prices for comment by "Uncle Dig" in South Australia who is in fact my youngest brother and a licenced builder to boot. With a few queries in hand from Dig, I went back to them today and discovered that it appears local govt are cracking down on people who want to build barns on vacant land and won't let this be done unless a house planning permit is sought at the same time. Will have to have a chat with the planning people at Nillumbik. It also seems likely that we may have to wait for new post bushfire building regulations to be promulgated.
On the positive side, the barn-building guys are very keen for us to have a look at some of their constructions and seem to be pretty flexible about additional windows, doors and the like.
The bloody power has just gone off!!! It's back on after a few minutes but I'm not taking any chances - that's all for today
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