18 Weeks

It has been 18 weeks since we arrived in sunny/rainy QLD. I have to admit that those 18 weeks have gone very quickly, but plenty has happened.

There has been little done on the pool since the last update, I have completed the form work for the pool fence strip footings, the concrete pour will be completed tomorrow morning commencing at 7.00am. The rain last weekend prevented me from doing the concrete last weekend.

Today the solar heating was installed for the pool, a large portion of the roof has now been covered with the specially designed black plastic tubing. The system we have installed will allow us to heat the pool in the cooler months and cool the pool when it is stinking hot.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the annual deer rut, at the time I thought it was peculiar, I can now reassess that and safely say it is bloody annoying. One particular Fallow stag not too far from our place is annoying the hell out of us his calls go all night from about 9.00pm until 4.00 or 5.00am. It is repetitive, loud and grating. One night Karren and I went out the front and could hear he was only a couple of hundred meters away, he was wondering around calling away. His calls when facing us were much louder than the ones when he was facing away down the valley. I made some very ordinary stag calls to him when his was calling down the valley, each time I did it he would turn and call back. Unfortunately I could not call loud enough or long enough to convince him to come up and have a go at me - so to speak... His was located in the valley just below the house across the road - pictured below.

Early morning

I noticed an rather strange cloud formation and thought it would be worthwhile taking a photo, not sure that the result really highlighted just how amazing it looked but you get the idea...

Weird cloud formation

Emily had her tenth birthday on Tuesday, ice cream cake and Peking duck pancakes were the order of the day.

Happy Birthday

Can't believe she is 10 already

We are off to Movieworld tomorrow, we have had the tape measure out to see if the girls are tall enough to do the rides they want. Rosie is pumped about the Scooby Doo ride and Roadrunner. Emily is still trying to decide if she has the mettle for Arkham Asylum, The Green Lantern or Superman. Should be a great day.

Plenty of Work Completed on Pool Today

What a great day, we can really see the progress on the pool works today!!! The pipework is nearly completed, solar pool heating goes in later this week or early next week. Pool filter and pump should be completed this week.

The earthworks have improved the outlook remarkably. You can finally see the pool sitting as it should surrounded by earth!

We have chosen a pool fence contractor, the fence will be both aluminum and frameless glass. The east and west sides will be aluminum panels, mounted 100mm from the outside edge of the pool deck. The north wall will be fence free except the edges of the pool deck which will be face mounted frameless glass. The edges shown on the bottom right side of the photos above and below show were the edge mounted glass will be

The south facing fence will be spigot mounted framless glass with a glass door, the idea is to be able to look out onto the pool and beyond with nothing interfering with the view. When the pool is finished you will be able to see if we were able to make our vision a reality. Below is a photo of the framless glass fencing.

I am currently setting out the strip footings for the side and front face of the fence. I hope to have the form work ready for pouring the concrete Saturday. Fingers crossed.

All the soil and fill was spread about to make a flattened area on the lower level of the back yard. The Mango, Orange and Lemon trees have finally been freed from the dirt that enveloped them for the best part of 10 weeks.

The fill didn't go that far when spread out, it was however too sloppy to completely finish spreading and compacting the soil and fill. In the next few weeks we will get someone in with a bobcat to do the finishing work.

It is a shame the photos don't really show any real detail with regards to the depth and area of the fill when spread out.

Easter, Gone!

Well that was over too quickly. We were fortunate to have Nan and Pa and Lou-Lou and Noel visit us over the Easter break, it was great to see them.

While they were here we tried to check out a few of Brisbane's interesting sites.

I wanted to check out a fishing spot on the Breakfast Creek junction with the Brisbane River and needed an excuse to visit it. I saw there was a park called Newstead Park at the junction so we took a quick trip in to look around. I am glad we did it was a wonderful spot. Newstead House sits atop a small hill just above the junction of the two tributaries and is surrounded by amazing gardens and lawns.

Newstead House

The girls had a great time running around the gardens, they were fascinated by the old tide gauge cairn, Rosie was particularly impressed when she found a small monument to the Bathurst class Corvettes, it is worth noting the information on the monument varied greatly to the info at wiki. She was even more impressed to discover that there was a Bathurst class Corvette called the HMAS Ballarat.

There were some enormous old Fig trees throughout the gardens. Emily and Rosie spotted an interesting tree and rushed back to tell me how old it was, Emily was certain it was really old cause it was planted in the 1950s. As we headed back to the cars we were startled when a tree started to talk to us! The one shown in the photos below was set up with motion sensors and when triggered told the story of an old tree, well you the look on Emily's face when the "tree" told her it was old in the 1850s was priceless!

Newstead circa 1850

Newstead current

It turns out that the fishing spot was not what I had imagined, not many structures and not great access for the girls.

We have done some more gardening with the help of our gardening gurus, Nan, Pa, Lou-Lou and Noel, some replanting, new planting and garden design work kept us busy for a few days. The scary part is we are only just beginning. The excavator is back on site today and hopefully this afternoon I will be able to post some more photos of the earthworks and pool progression. There is so much more work to do!

Whilst working in the garden we came across what looked like spew, I was wondering what the dog had eaten - thinking the worse and wondering if he had tried some local variety Cane toad, fortunately for Charlie the wonder dog, upon closer inspection it turned out to be some form of interesting fungi/slime/mold growing. No doubt the best way to describe it's appearance is to call it dog vomit, and unsurprisingly images of the slime mold appear when searching for dog vomit slime, thankfully it is a harmless garden oddity.

Dog vomit mold

As I stated previously I have commenced work with Australia Post as a motorcycle PDO. My first day was a torrid introduction, the muscles and bones took a pounding spending 7.5 hours on the CT110. The next few days the muscle stiffness and general soreness began to subside and hopefully in the next couple of weeks or so I will have fully attuned my portly frame to sitting astride a motorcycle, spending my days poking stuff in letter boxes. Getting to know where the boxes are and where the mail run goes is not as difficult as you would imagine and the sheer volume of mail varies greatly from day to day, another thing I learnt is that some people put their letter boxes in the most inaccessible and out of reach hidden away places imaginable! 

We have chosen our tiles for the pool coping and feature wall, it is apparent that most people get their tiles for pools from The Pool Tile Company. We have chosen to go with granite tiles in Mushroom colour, for the feature wall we have gone with a glass mosaic called Sea Green Pearl.

Pool fencing is another Pandora's box, the rules and regulations regarding pool fencing is incredible and over bearing, if you have a few hours of your life you don't need and have nothing else worth doing then peruse the QLD legislation and regs document for all you need to know about pool fencing, or not!

Autumn in QLD brings on the annual rut, the local Red and Fallow deer stags spend the night hours trying to impress the lady folk by hooting and hollering, it is quite interesting to hear one start then hear the others reply as the calls echo through the valleys and hills that surround our place. The calls are quite different and you can easily distinguish between the two, so I am not sure why Reds respond to a Fallow call and vice versa, it is most peculiar. Over the weekend, just for shits and giggles I might keep the girls up a little later and see if we can get the local stags to respond to our calls.

It's Been a Great Week!

Well it is official this has been a great week!

I finally completed my Motorcycle training and assessment with HART and have landed employment with Australia Post as a Motorcycle Postal Delivery Officer! Very happy and thoroughly looking forward to my first day of work on Monday the 25th of March! The girls are excited about Dad being a Postie as well.

The Australia Post induction is one of the most comprehensive and interesting that I have been through. It was a very worth while three days, interesting and engaging! The motorcycle training and assessment was also rigorous, educational and comprehensive. It is a pleasing way to start employment with a new company.

Good news with our pool construction as well!

Form work finished

LED lights in place

Pipe work and skimmer box in as well.

Once the form work was finally completed only bad weather could have prevented the concrete spray from going ahead. Initially booked in for Thursday, a small delay with the form work meant it wasn't sprayed until Friday.

I came home from the motorcycle training to a freshly sprayed pool. It looks fantastic, I am really pleased and you can finally see how the design will allow us to look unobstructed into the bush background from the pool.

The deep middle is very deep

The pool was designed to be deep in the middle at 1.8m and 1.2m at each end. In the end the issues with excavation have given us a pool that is closer to 2.0m in the middle and 1.2m at one end and 1.4m at the other. No big deal, shouldn't affect the use of the pool at all.

Wetting the structural decks for paving

Wetting a green pool in warm weather is crucial to stop cracking, the heat coming from the curing concrete was incredible. It will need a drink three times a day for the next couple of days.

Temp fence spoils the view

The temp fence spoils the view across the pool and feature wall with the bush in the background, we need to pick tiles and pavers for the pool and decide on fencing for the three sides that require pool fencing, no fence is required across the back wall, giving us uninterrupted views from the pool.

Shallow each end

This photo shows the step for sitting on and drinking booze, and the step below and off to the side for Rosie to stand on with her head above water.

The step in the pool.

Another view of the pool with the sitting step in the foreground.

No not filling the pool yet!

Skimmer box off to my right. The feature wall about 350mm above the water level to stop the kids climbing on it and falling out over the back edge of the pool and into the abyss. Not sure how the Mango and Lemon trees will cope with the concrete over spray, I will have a go at rinsing it off the leaves tomorrow.

The formwork comes off in about a week, the excavator then returns to finish the earth works, then tiling and lining with pebbles a week later, then fencing and filling. Should be ready to swim in by the end of April. We are hoping against hope that the solar heating gives us a couple of weeks of swimming before winter sets in, fingers crossed. I will need to do some landscaping and turf work so hopefully I can get all of it completed in the cooler months to have it done and dusted ready for September and the start of the warmer weather.

Won't be much to report on pool wise next week but I will give an update of my first few days at work and report on our visitors for the Easter break. Can't wait.

Pool Progress

The weather has been significantly better this week! Hooray!

The box and steel guys finished the box work Thursday and are commencing the steel reinforcing this week, at this stage the engineer is booked to inspect the steelwork Wednesday and the concrete sprayers booked for Thursday. Fingers crossed this time next week we will have a sprayed pool. The concrete has to then cure for two weeks before tiling and pebble work can be finished.

Looking North-west

Starting to look like a pool

North-west corner

Ready for steel.

I have been doing a fair bit of walking lately, mainly around the Mt Coot-tha forest. There are numerous walking tracks and mountain bike trails in the area. I have walked most of them now and have been enjoying the walks varying in distance from 6 - 10k, the bush  is quite picturesque and it certainly makes for an enjoyable tramp, although the hills are a challenge. I haven't seen much wildlife, however today I managed to see three different Lace Monitors, this one was just a few metres in front of me when he started to climb the tree. It didn't take him long to get all the way up there!

Long way up there!

I couldn't get photos of the other two because the were super cunning and kept moving to the opposite side of the tree from me as I tried to skirt around it to take the photo. This bloke had a different strategy, just climb real high and not worry about hiding.

Safe now!

Colleges crossing is now open again so I thought I would go back and have a look at it without the water. The first thing obvious apart from the road itself was the destruction that the water had caused. The recreation area on the south side of the river was destroyed, the playground looked like it had been crushed like tinfoil.

Was once a playground

Heading to Ipswich

This photo was taken from around the area of the high water mark from the 2013 floods.

Colleges Crossing

The crossing itself looking south-west, the car is roughly where the water was when I took the photos a couple of weeks ago.

Debris everywhere

A little bit of luck!

Week 12 of our Queensland adventure saw a little bit of good luck come our way!

Emily was awarded a Certificate of Recognition for her seamless transition to her new school, both socially and academically. The award was presented to her at the school assembly on Wednesday. We are very proud of the way that both of our beautiful young ladies have adapted to their new way of life and in particular the way they have embraced their new school.

Very proud of Emily

Karren also got some pleasant news, she was informed that she had won a Maggie Beer gift hamper from a raffle that she entered when we visited the Museum earlier this year. The hamper contained some tasty condiments and other assorted foodie stuff including a recipe book. She was well chuffed.

A bit of good fortune also came my way! I was successful at securing a conditional offer of employment, the condition being that I successfully pass a two day training and assessment course. I will provide all details when and if I am successful, but needless to say it is a good confidence boost to be given an offer after not hearing a single word from some 30 odd other job applications. Honestly, people working in Recruitment and HR need to work out a way to simply contact unsuccessful applicants. Surely it is not too much to ask?

The weather continues to dampen both literally and figuratively, our efforts to get some work done on the pool. Fortunately the weather broke long enough to get a day and a half of form work completed this week. It is still very frustrating and we are now a month behind the construction timetable. We have well and truly used up the eight day rain allowance in the contract. There is very little you can do about inclement weather and Stuart and the team at Rogers Pools are as frustrated with the progress as we are.

Some form work

A little more form work

A month ago I joined the Dollar Shave Club. I just got sick and tired of paying ridiculous amounts of money for razors, I was using once a week. Yes I am still being a slob and shaving only once a week! I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the blades. For something completely different I shaved three times in a week the first time I used the blades. I was very happy with how the blades performed and they seemed to maintain their edge at least as well as the expensive stuff I had been using prior. I wouldn't say that they gave a closer shave than the more expensive blades but they were certainly not worse, I would strongly recommend giving them a try.

Emily heads off to her grade five camp this week, to say she is excited about her three day adventure to Edmund Park is an understatement to say the least. The flying possum swing, flying fox, abseiling and ropes course are all activities she has been looking forward to having a crack at. I hope for her sake the weather is kind and the activities meet or exceed her expectations, just quietly the forecast looks horrible!

It is only two weeks to Easter and the end of first term, Emily and Rosie are excited about the school holidays for a couple of reasons. Obviously a couple of weeks off school is appealing, throw in some Easter chocolates and a visit from Nan and Pa, Aunty Lou-Lou and Noel and you have the recipe for two very eagre and excited girls.

Nothing to see here...

Nothing much of any note has occurred in the week since the last blog entry...

Plenty more rain, some rain, a little sunshine, more rain, oh and some rain. If this keeps up I will have webbed feet and gills.

So as I said nothing much to report and definitely no progress on the pool.

I thought today I might check out Colleges crossing which has been closed due to flooding for a couple of weeks now. I crossed Colleges crossing when I drove up from Ballarat but could not remember the crossing in detail, or at all for that matter! I guess a 200 meter section of a 1800km drive is going to be a little hard to recall.

Colleges Crossing 5/3/2013

As you can see from these photos I took on the 5th of March the river is high and very wide whilst the water in the middle is moving at quite a pace, some four to five metres above the road level.

Colleges Crossing 5/3/2013

Flood Level Indicator Colleges Crossing

The paint marking indicates the level of the flooding (about 8 to 9m) this year and pales in comparison to the flood of 2011in the photo below that I found by searching on the interwebs google images. 

High water mark 2011 Colleges Crossing

The tree in the water in the middle of the water in the photo (I found on google images) above is the dead and droopy looking thing at the base of the tree in this shot below. The truck was parked roughly where I stood to take the photos I posted above. The high water mark in 2011 was about 60 or 70m further up the road and more than 10m higher.

Colleges Crossing clean up post 2011 flood

The crossing is closed currently by road blocks, with signage stating the level of demerit and fines applied if you attempt to cross in a vehicle. Given any attempt would end in death I fail to see the point of such signs, however from the photos below you can see that some people will attempt to cross flooded roads that are signed as closed anyway...

Volvo flooded while crossing Pullen Pullen Creek in Grandview Rd.

While taking these photos I got to have a chat with a local who was at pains to tell me that each time this creek floods he has to retrieve someone out of one of the two crossings nearby that are inundated. People it seems are incredibly stupid when it comes to flooded roads. The people who risk their own lives to save them are brave if  not a little silly for putting their own lives at risk to save the stupid. He told me of one family that were washed down stream in a flood, a young man passing by dove into the water to help save their lives, fortunately for the rescuer the barbed wire fence that was normally in situ  had been washed away by the flood water, he was able to save the older lady trapped in the car, but was lucky he didn't lose his own life to save others.

Signage and massive fines and demerits don't seem to be a deterrent, perhaps a different approach is required. My suggestion would be to remove all road closed signs and replace them with a cross at your risk sign and have bigger and better depth markers, maybe even some indicators to show the speed of the water over the crossing. Then let the morons cross if they feel the need and Darwin's theory of evolution should take care of the rest. I am sure this will at least reduce the number of people who are dumb enough to attempt to cross a flooded road. Might lift the average IQ and even improve the gene pool a little as well.

One wrecked and written off Swedish taxi.

Anyway fingers crossed for some better weather in the next week.