Fallow Aplenty...

We have seen numerous deer over the time we have been here, this morning however, I was treated to a rare sight.

Whilst taking the girls to school I saw a large white Fallow stag eating some Lantana just off the creek on Pullenvale Rd. He is the same stag we saw on Anzac day I am sure. As I passed the bridge I looked back over my shoulder and saw another stag, only with much larger antlers in the scrub on the edge of the creek. I was excited, so where the girls! We turned around and had another look, they were a 100m or so away and not spooked by us and the car in the slightest. I got a grainy and poor quality shot with my iPhone...

White Fallow front and centre

After dropping the girls at school, came passed again and saw they were both still there! Time for some more photos - I hoped!

I went home and quickly grabbed the camera, then realised I needed the bigger lens, now where was it? Not where it should have been... Then I remembered it was in the car, so off I went again.

I pulled up on the RHS of the road and proceeded to take a couple of shots of the white stag, something spooked them, then I saw a bloke walking towards me apologising that he had spooked them and asking if I got any shots, I showed him what I had and he was happy for me as he only had the crappy phone shots as well...

I managed to get these before me old mate scared them off...

If you enlarge this shot (by clicking on the photo) you can see the second stag just above and slightly to the left of centre of the fence post. the two stags seem to be looking at one another.

In this shot you can see the ears and antlers of the second stag a little more clearly, at this stage they know something is up and start to slowly head for cover.

I have to say I was pretty happy with the shots and I spoke the the other guy for a few minutes then said I would have a crack at seeing them from the other side of the creek, this would require a little stalking - not an easy task in my bright yellow hiviz Aus post uniform. I was glowing like a beacon. Still I would give it a crack!

Uh oh, he has seen me...

Obviously he was not your average Fallow stag and he was quick to realise a hunter would not be wearing Aus post hivis, so nothing to worry about, business as usual! He turned and went nonchalantly  back to his pal. Then had a casual look over his shoulder to see if I was still there, ooh the yellow it burns...

OK they now knew I was stalking them and the thought they had better make for thicker cover, damn that postie this tucker is too good! 

At this stage my old mate joined me again, and for someone who says he is a bow hunting deer stalker - he made a lot of bloody noise. This was my last semi focused shot before the got the flock out of there!

Wow, that was excellent, my heart was pumping, adrenalin running. Great stuff!

I did learn a quick lesson, whilst photographing wildlife in scrub and motley light you need to switch off auto focus, I lost a couple of excellent shots because the camera did not focus on what I wanted it too. Now I need to find the camera manual to see how that is done...

I reckon I need to get a bow and permission from the land owner to see if I can bags me a trophy, whilst stalking with a camera is good, the thought of a trophy stag on the wall and a few feeds of venison is also quite appealing!

Now google bow hunting supplies Brisbane...

Relaxing in the Garden

We had a busy weekend - relaxing in the garden!

There is a mountain of work to be done landscaping the front and back yards of our place. We focussed this weekend on the area surrounding LHS of the pool. We had to turn what was once grass beside the pool into a garden area to try and tie it into the existing garden area that surrounds the large retaining walls that seperate the levels of the back yard.

We sourced a wide variety of plants from our local nurseries including Purple Fountain Grass, some varieties of Strelitzia, Variegated Feather Reed, Phantom Mondo Grass, a number of different Macropidia (Kangaroo Paw) and some varieties of Cordylines including Pink Joy, there were other plants but their name and identity tags escape me. To help with the planting we also took cuttings from other plants in our garden these included Dracaena Massangeana, Dracaena Surprise, Reflexed Dracaena and Agave Attenuata.

The pool area was also turfed with a variety of Zoysia called Nara Native. Of course it is heralded by the growers as the best thing since sliced bread, we will see! For me the main advantage was its ability to tolerate salt.

The completed garden area was mulched with Hoop Pine bark, it is a curly bark mulch that is used widely in the area, the hooping or curly bark helps to keep the mulch in place on sloping surfaces, it works very effectively.

Our progress so far takes us from this...

To this...

Then this...

To make sure that all the new garden areas were well watered after I had to alter all the existing lawn and garden irrigation systems, it was no small task and is still not completed. The pool is in the middle of a lawned and garden area so the existing sprinklers and pipes were spraying directly over the pool, or cut by the excavators during pool construction. As you can imagine I had lots of holes to dig, pipes to lay or repair and sprinklers to change.

The garden edging was simple by comparison, given it was only a few metres to join the pool edge to the existing edge it didn't take too long. The next phase of the garden work is not so simple, there will be 40 or 50 metres of garden edging required, that is not something to look forward to and bagged concrete will no longer suffice to bed the edging pavers. Another trip or two to the garden supplies for cement, sand and aggregate is on the cards.

When living in Ballarat you take for granted the proximity of things and the ease of access to all manner of shops and retail outlets. To get the garden supplies, mulch, soil and rocks it is a 40km round trip to the nearest supplier. The nearest Coates Hire centre is 50km round trip and the nearest Bunnings is just around the corner from Coates. To use these trips to the best of your advantage you need to plan your weekend work to the finest detail, unfortunately I have not yet perfected this level of detail. Needless to say forgetting the smallest thing can be a little frustrating and waste a large chunk of your weekend.

Another busy weekend next week too, hope I can remember to put on sunscreen, I am not used to 24 degree days in the middle of July. In the past a weekend in the garden in July would mean fighting off frost bite not sunburn...

I really need to get cracking if I am any hope of finishing the gardens before the start of cricket season!

Loving Winter in Brisbane!

After spending 43 winters in Ballarat, I reckon I have had my fair share! It should come as no surprise to hear that we are finding our first winter in Brisbane, which as we keep hearing, is cold by their standards, to be quite pleasant. So mild in fact we have only used heating once for about three hours. After being berated by Karren when she got home, for being soft, I turned it off! I can honestly say I am not missing the icy mornings, lazy winds and miserable grey days at all.

We have had a little more work done on the pool, it is still not completed, read into that what you will!

Here is a little video of the pool lights in action...

Pool in blue light

Speaking of lights, I stumbled across this the other day and thought it worthy of sharing...

Brisbane City Lights

There seems to be an abundance of aerial photographers doing 360 degree images. I found a couple of the floods in 2011.

Colleges Crossing in Flood

Colleges Crossing Post Flood

Moggill Ferry in Flood

Moggill Ferry post Flood

The following panorama is smack bang in the middle of the area I deliver mail to.

Kingfisher Park

It is a really nice area, with plenty of interesting people in the neighborhood a knight, plenty of doctors, and some lawyery types.

Karren and I have been very busy in the garden I have been concentrating on lawn irrigation - it is nearly complete. This weekend we plan to do more landscaping work, we need to hoe a garden area that was once grass and replant, then cut and lift some grass from the front garden and replant at the back, we'll see how successful that one will be! We will be hiring a rotary hoe and turf cutter to help with that task. Once that work is complete we will need to get a heap of mulch and spread it over the garden areas.

More posts to follow when the work is done!

Six Months

It has been six months since we packed up and moved north!

So what have we learned from our experience so far? Here are my top ten things to consider when packing up and moving interstate...

1. Rent before you buy. If you must buy then...
2. Fly up and do a full inspection in the week prior to settlement and detail all things that require attention prior to settlement.
3. Don't plan to move until at least a week after settlement, give some time for the little things like contract settlements to get done properly!
4. Pay a little extra for a quality, specialist lawyer/conveyancer, if issues arise it will save you in the long run!
5. Don't sweat about your kids settling in, they adapt quicker than you could ever imagine.
6. Make the effort to keep in touch with friends and family, social media and blogs help no end!
7. Make the effort to meet and socialise with your neighbours, kids friends parents and work associates, it is a great way to meet new friends and like minded people.
8. Get out and explore your new surrounds, see the sights and take it all in.
9. Thoroughly check out where you want to live and why, we did and we are enjoying the results.
10. Do it you won't regret it.

We got a little more work done in the back yard on the weekend, we stacked another 500kg of rock into our gabion wall, it is now near enough to complete.

I had a call from a friend in Ballarat through the week, they wanted to make a purchase on eBay and asked if I could do a pick up. I was more than happy to go and collect the item, especially given its sheer size and weight would more than likely mean the would be visiting to collect it at a later date!

Any way Charlie was quite interested in it as you would expect...

The girls took a swim this week, the locals think we are mad, but the water temp is not too cold and the air temp of around 22 deg C is warm enough for the Pullenvale Penguins to get wet! In fact it was warm enough to coax Karren into the pool on Sunday, she jumped in then straight out - happy enough to say she had been in.

I have started the long process of educating the girls on how to perfect pool shenanigans. Starting off slowly with the basics e.g. The pin drop, the bomb, the sit, banana or horsie, back spray and so on. Rosie and Emily have progressed well and got the basics all most locked away, both are struggling with some of the more difficult manoeuvres. At the moment the banana is proving to be the most problematic, any efforts to attempt the banana are resulting in landings more reminiscent of belly flops. Still practice make perfect.

North Stradbroke - Queens Birthday Weekend.

We have just returned home from a magnificent weekend on North Stradbroke Island. It is a great spot!

Map of Nth. Stradbroke Island

Our friends Barb and Tim kindly asked us over to join them at their shack for the weekend and we had a ball!

We had to book a return ferry ride, yes it's best to book to avoid disappointment if the ferries are full when you arrive, which is quite likely on busy weekends! There are two ferries, the Moongalba and the Big Red Cat, we used both, the Cat had a cafe and carried many more cars and was determined by the girls to be the better option!

The trip to Nth Stradbroke 

Hilux on the Moongalba

When we arrived on Stradbroke we were immediately breath tested, along with every other car on the ferry, just as well we weren't on the Cat with it's licensed cafe. We then headed to Barb and Tim's shack at Point Lookout. The shack was very well set up, perfect for weekends away and obviously big enough for two families. It was a superb location, right next to the Bowls club meaning cheap beers and a counter meal were only metres away!

We headed over to Amity to do a little fishing, hoping to also see some dolphins and we weren't disappointed! We headed up along the beach, the Hilux had its first taste of sand driving ( I will give it a thorough clean to try to get all the salt and sand off it ). A permit is required to drive on the beaches on Nth. Stradbroke. We dropped the pressure in the tyres to about 18psi and away we went. It is amazing how many people refuse to reduce air pressure in their tyres.

The beach drive to Amity

The jetty at Amity was busy with people who were quietly going about their pastime, hoping to catch a feed, and quite a few were putting anything caught into the buckets regardless of size, it seems as though bag limits and size restrictions mean nothing to some people.

It was peaceful and quiet until some young lad arrived and then spent the next two hours annoying all and sundry by loudly espousing his expertise in everything from catching Snapper (they were actually Bream) to feeding dolphins, cooking and identifying rare and obscure fish species. I am disappointed I didn't get to pick his brains on the Middle East, politics and the stock market. The highlight for me though was when he claimed he knew the name of a colourfully striped little fish that was caught on the jetty, after shouting to all and sundry he knew exactly what is was, he proudly and completely ignorantly proclaimed it a reef fish, yes a reef fish. Brilliant stuff.

Just on dusk a dolphin and her young offspring then started swimming about looking for a cheap feed. Tim encouraged the larger dolphin to come in close enough to be hand fed, all the girls got to hand feed the gentle creature. Rosie summed it up by telling us that this was a better day than her birthday, in fact better than all her birthdays put together, in fact the best day EVER! After watching Tim and the girls feed the dolphins the young and loud teen then set about telling all and sundry how to hand feed dolphins, his knowledge knows no bounds and he was only too willing to share it with anyone in earshot. 

Dolphin Feeding

We headed back to Point Lookout for a feed at the bowls club and along the way we came upon another wriggly stick. The small python was warming itself on the road and would not be moved, hopefully it survived all the traffic before it decided it was warm enough to move on. In the photo it looks as though it is moving, but alas it would not budge, camera flashes, a small tail touch and excited girl squeals could not encourage it to move along

Carpet Python

We had a nice meal at the bowls club, played a little Keno and lost a little on Keno, we then headed back to the shack and had a few quiet drinks.

We got up bright and early Sunday and went down to the beach to build some sand sculptures, a mermaid was high on the list of things to make out of sand so with some help from Karren the mermaid was formed.

Lovely Mermaid Sculpture

We headed up to the SLSC at Point Lookout and were amazed by the weather lashing the eastern side of Stradbroke. The sign at the beach said it all!

Ominous Sign (click for bigger image) 

Point Lookout 

Pretty Heavy Seas

A photo from the sheltered side of the headland, taken only minutes after the one above.

We did a little more beach driving to finish off a busy two days of fun and adventure.

The trip home saw us on the Big Red Cat, a much bigger and better equipped ferry than the Moongalba.

Busy ferry ride home

Bye Bye Straddie

We had a brilliant weekend, thanks to Barb and Tim for inviting us across, we had a ripper time and can't wait to do it again. Even better, when we got home we were relieved to see Charlie hadn't burnt the house down while we were away.

Backyard Citrus Grove

The previous owners of our house obviously loved to grow their own fruit.

We have had a bountiful supply of Mangoes that were eagerly devoured by the girls, we have had Paw Paw, not a huge fan but it was much better than I had expected.

Freshly Squeezed OJ for breakfast.

In the last two weeks we have had a huge amount of Oranges and Lemons ripen on the trees in the backyard. There were many kilos of Oranges so we ended up juicing nearly all of them. It was the tastiest, sweetest juice I have ever had. So far we have produced more than 10 litres of fresh OJ, it is wonderful to have a fresh chilled OJ for Brekky.  The Lemons are proving a little harder to use, I think we will end up making some Marmalade.

The last of this seasons Oranges.

Amazing amount of fruit from a small tree.

Next fruit to ripen will be Mandarins, we have a small tree with a small amount of fruit on it, however it is still quite some time from being ripe. 

Mandarins not ripe yet.

The pool build is still going, it is frustrating to hear from a neighbor that they started to build their concrete pool seven weeks after us and have been swimming in it for a month! That being said, our pool fence has been certified and I have been told our pool will have the pebble applied on Monday. It should then be filled and chemicals added by the end of the week. Hopefully we will have a functioning pool for the change of season and the onset of winter! We will call ourselves the Pullenvale Penguins and we will be swimming in the pool the first day it is ready - come hell or high water we will be swimming in the pool on the first day it is ready! Photos of the first swim will be provided.

The filter, chlorinator and pump set whilst being top notch good gear, is not terribly appealing to the eye. Hardly the sort of thing you want to adorn your backyard to add visual appeal. So how do you screen such a beast? As you can see the filter is a large black orb with a couple of VSD driven pumps, salt chlorinator and associated PVC pipework. Noice different unusual...

Pretty hey...

I had the idea that a stone Gabion wall will give the desired screen and add some visual appeal to another wise pretty ordinary looking piece of kit. The next few photos and notes will hopefully illustrate the construction phase of aforementioned backyard art.

Structural posts in place.

The first step is to add some posts to give the Gabion some stability, it is possible to make them without support but the base width must be one third the height of the Gabion. A 500mm wide base was too much for my design so two 50x50 gal RHS posts provide enough strength to support the wall. The design incorporates three walls with a sloped corrugated galvanised iron roof to keep the sun and weather off the gear. The three walled set up should also allow easy service access to the pool equipment and the AC unit.

With the posts set it was time to cut and set up the wire frame that houses the stone that make the Gabion, I was initially going to wire the mesh frame together, but have since decided to weld the mesh together and paint the welds with cold gal. The welds should provide further strength to the wall. It took a little more time than I had expected but I am pleased with the results.

Mesh frame in place.

I learnt an import lesson very early on in the rock filling process, there were not enough lateral supports to keep the sides straight (as Karren had suggested). We had to remove all rock and add more supports, then start again.

Doesn't look much better yet.

Lower section complete.

I am pleased with the results, there are plenty of different colours in the rock fill that are even more pronounced when the rocks are wet.

About half finished

Getting there.

 It was a pretty successful day, I ran the conduit for the power to control the pool cleaner as well. All is in readiness for the pebble coating. Could really have done with a swim when I finished today...

What is it with the Weather?

The weather over the last few weeks has been great with only the odd shower here and there to settle the dust. Of course now that we are finally up the the stage where I can begin to do some of the work I need to do with the landscaping it starts to rain and I am stuck inside writing a blog instead of doing what really need to be done! Frustrated only begins to describe it!

Anyhow the pool fencing is finally complete, and I reckon it looks alright. After watching the guys install it, I realised I should have bought the fence and fittings and done it myself. Unfortunately I just needed to see it done first to give me enough confidence in my ability that I could have done it myself. Not to worry it looks great.

The view from where I will be sitting drinking my beers watching the kids.

The desired result has been achieved, I can comfortably sit on the back porch and look out over the pool into the bush - view uninterrupted!

View looking west

The position of the pool ensure we have sun shining on it until late into the afternoon, that along with the solar heating will ensure we get maximum usage out of the pool. That is the theory anyway.

In the background of the photo directly above you can see four Paw-Paw trees, we have had our first ripe fruit, it was surprisingly good. The oranges are nearly ripe, we will be picking them over he next few weeks and enjoying some freshly squeezed OJ for brekky!

Strip footings look OK - you can't pick 20mm run out by eye...

Very happy with the results.

The strip footings were completed the weekend of Emily's birthday week, we had her best friend Heidi and her mum Margeux visit us from Ballarat as a special treat for her. The concreting started at 7.30am and it was all hands on deck - Margeux and Karren both made excellent concrete labourers, all they needed was a hat made from a hanky with the four corners tied in knots and they would have been set so to speak.

The weekend trip to Movieworld was a highlight the rides were awesome and Emily really enjoyed the Superman ride after controlling her fear of dying while riding it! Rosie is still frustrated by not being tall enough for the really scary rides but she LOVED the Scooby Doo adventure ride.

What is it with Rosie giving herself rabbit ears?

I had a run in with what I believe to be a Coastal Taipan at the Brookfield Produce centre the other day. To be quite honest if I never see another snake I won't be disappointed! It gave me a scare at the time, but only when I googled images of snakes that call SEQ home and recognised what it was, that I had nearly trodden, on did a true sense of oh shit sink in. The girl that worked at the produce centre who was nearly bitten trying to pick it up should also thank her lucky stars...