ANZAC Day

I hold a special place in my heart for ANZAC Day and the ANZACs.

We have so much to thank them for, so many of them paid the ultimate price, so that we remain free...

This morning my daughters and I awoke early and headed off to Bellbowrie for the dawn service, it was so nice to attend a dawn service dressed in t-shirt and thongs - instead of shivering in beanies, coats and scarves.

It was quite a wonderful service, the sun was rising across the Brisbane river, there was a background chorus of Kookaburras in song, before the service commenced there was a quiet buzz coming from the crowd that would number in thousands not hundreds. Apparently the service in Ballarat was the biggest in a long time as well. It seems that ANZAC day is special for many other people as well.

After we had our own little gunfire breakfast we headed into Kenmore to see the ANZAC parade march by. The crowd again was impressive, people lining both sides of Moggill Rd to clap and wave as the Diggers, bands, Scouts, Guides and students marched by. I wish I had taken my camera to the march!

Sadly the number of veterans is diminishing each year and as they pass by I wondered what horrors they had witnessed, what bravery and courage they displayed and what mateship was forged in their service for country. Above all else I hope that we are worthy of and thankful for their sacrifice.

Both of my grandfathers served in WWII.

Frederick William Stephen was a RAAF Corporal in 452 Squadron which was equipped with Spitfires. Fred received a 1939-1945 Star and Pacific Star for his service in the RAAF, where he was an aircraft mechanic Fitter class (II)E. Fred was part of 452 Squadron when it saw service in Darwin and Morotai, they also flew ground attacks against Japanese island garrisons to support the invasions of Tarakan and Balikpapan.

Fred's Service Medals

Geoffrey Keith was a Private, then Craftsman in the Australian Army, he served in the 37/39th Battalion and was part of the 259 Australian Light Aid Detachment when discharged. Keith received a Pacific Star, Defence Medal, War Medal and ASM 1939-1945.

I know very little of my grandfathers' service, Fred died before I was born and Keith never once spoke to me about the war or his service. What knowledge I do have has come from my parents, uncles and aunts and time spent scouring the hard to read digital copies of Fred and Keith's war service records, which I accessed via the National Archives of Australia.

We plan to spend the rest of the day doing something together as a family, not sure what yet, but a cricket game between the Army and a Brookfield United CC XI beckons me to Brookfield, unfortunately I hold little hope of the girls wanting to watch. Whatever we decide to do you can rest assured that our grandparents, great grandparents and servicemen past and present will not be far from our thoughts...

The following poem by Robert Laurence Binyon which was first published on the 21st of September 1914 is one of my favourites...

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children
England mourns for her dead across the sea,
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow,
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again,
They sit no more at familiar tables of home,
They have no lot in our labour of the daytime,
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires and hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the night.

As the stars shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Flanders Fields written by John McCrae is another poem I enjoy each ANZAC day.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Finally one last poem that pays tribute to...

The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels
Many a mother in Australia,
When the busy day is done,
Sends a prayer to the Almighty
For the keeping of her son,
Asking that an Angel guide him
And bring him safely back
Now we see those prayers are answered
On the Owen Stanley track,
For they haven’t any halos,
Only holes slashed in the ears,
And with faces worked by tattoos,
With scratch pins in their hair,
Bringing back the wounded,
Just as steady as a hearse,
Using leaves to keep the rain off
And as gentle as a nurse.

Slow and careful in bad places,
On the awful mountain track,
And the look upon their faces,
Makes us think that Christ was black.
Not a move to hurt the carried,
As they treat him like a Saint,
It’s a picture worth recording,
That an Artist’s yet to paint.
Many a lad will see his Mother,
And the Husbands, Weans and Wives,
Just because the Fuzzy Wuzzy
Carried them to save their lives.

From mortar or machine gun fire,
Or a chance surprise attack,
To safety and the care of Doctors,
At the bottom of the track.
May the Mothers in Australia,
When they offer up a prayer,
Mention those impromptu Angels,
With the Fuzzy Wuzzy hair.

-Sapper H "Bert" Beros NX 6925, 7th Div., RAE, AIF

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.