Rainfall this week : 1mm

Rummaging around in one of the containers I finally found the Champagne Coups. (Not sure how we ended up with so much stuff😳) We popped the cork on the bottle of bubbles and celebrated receiving our Construction Certificate.👏 In the grand scheme of things it really didn’t take that long, only about four months from submitting the plans into council to getting our CC. Compared to when we were going through council at the Redlands for our build at Straddie (three very long years) I’d say four months is a walk in the park quite frankly.

A little more shed progress this week. Battling the big westerly winds last Thursday we decided to add some extra strapping to the front half of the shed also due to the strong North Easterly winds we get in the summer. We have pulled down the fence surrounding the shed which was originally erected to keep out the curious stock (they have all gone back next door now) and had a nice clean up around the shed. Our trusty scissor was returned on Friday ☹️ gee didn’t that just make life so much easier. And of course the wind completely disappeared the day after taking the scissor back🤪

After returning the Scissor in Warwick we proceeded to Bunnings (Chillies favourite place, I’ve never seen a dog so excited to go shopping😂) to spend a small fortune, even the lady cashier looked at me before hitting me with the bill. And every time we go there we always seem to leave with more plants.

Another wonderful neighbour who has been watching our progress as he passes by into town and back called in to introduce himself last week. And after a lovely chat he then returned over the weekend to drop off his Duct Lifter for us to borrow to assist with installing our garage doors. What an absolute life saver. Here I thought that I would end up needing a shoulder reconstruction from attempting to lift them into place ourselves with the help of Yoshi. (That’s the excavator, and yes we have named all of our machinery 😆)

Sunday being our designated day off, we left the hounds at home and headed to Stanthorpe for the FB & EK Holden Nationals Car Meet. What a wonderful collection of beautifully restored vehicles. The bright fun colours were such a delight to see. Much more daring than today’s grey, white and black that you seem to see everywhere. (Ours included) Can you imagine a pink RAM or Tesla😳 With big blue skies above and no wind, the crowds were out and about enjoying the show and amazing weather.

The festivities continued Sunday evening with the ‘Festival of Small Halls’ gig at The Henry Parkes School of Arts in Tenterfield. This grand old building which saw Sir Henry Parkes, the premier of the colony of NSW deliver the speech regarded as the start of the creation of the Nation we call Australia today, houses a beautiful little theatre that hosts musicals, concerts and movies. Nabbing front row seats we saw a great local lad named Clay Blyth open the show, then the main acts Old Man Luedecke (Canada) and The Barleyshakes Duo (Australia). What a fun and fabulous night indeed all while enjoying a few mulled wines to help stay warm🍷.

During one of our early morning walks recently along the creek we discovered we now have a Rakali residing in the northern section of the creek. He or She looks to be just a juvenile at about 15-20cm long. Now neither of us had ever heard of a Rakali previously but apparently they are found nationwide although in some areas their numbers have dramatically declined.

The Rakali also known as the rabe, “The Australian Otter” or water-rat is an Australian native rodent. Now don’t let that deter you, he or she is super cute and very entertaining to watch foraging for breakfast along the creek. We initially thought we had a platypus until little Rakahontas ( Jason has named her) popped out of the water and hurried into her little cave under the tree roots. Of course she may very well be a he! How privileged we are to have this funny little creature deciding to choose our property to make his or her home 😊

While it doesn’t seem like we have achieved a lot with the shed progress this week, we have really only worked on it for about three days, giving Jason’s arm and hands a break from working on the steel. He has definitely been feeling it. All the brackets for the roller doors which had to all be amended for better strength have all been installed, so we are definitely ready to try out the duct lifter and get the doors up. We can’t start sheeting the outside yet until some extra flashing arrives for around the bottom, which will hopefully be next week sometime. So in the meantime the groundwork’s for the house slab will begin.👏

Until next week…