Time for a catch up

Wow how time gets away from us. Been too long since I posted up here, and now believe it or not I have four trips that I have to update you on!!!

For the first, I have to take you all the way back to the last weekend of February….

So, as you will (may) remember from the last blog, Paul, Stuart and I had spent a weekend with just the boys in the bush. During this time we had finished off the water tank, and the shed was finally ready for the final inspection by the council. So, upon return, I rang Ranbuild to inform them the water tank was in and we are ready for the council to drop by….

“…did you run the overflow for the tank away from the shed?” they asked…

“Umm…..no” I responded.

“Oh well they won’t sign it off unless you install an overflow” they informed me….. Grr…something they could have told me earlier!!!

So it was on the weekend of the 27th of Feb to the 1st of March, we made a quick trip up to Little Duna to finalise the water tank and install an overflow.

We left Friday night after work as we normally do and arrived under cover of darkness. Everything was so dry, but it was starting to cool off overnight, so my first job as the kids were put to bed was to get a fire going.

*Note* I have to mention that Fi had just completed the course I gave her for Xmas on how to use her new Digital SLR camera, so this weekend was spent practicing what she learnt, and we ended up with lots of photos… I’ll only post a selection up here…

Anyway, I collected a few dry sticks and it wasn’t long before we had a ripper fire going. Fi saw it as an opportunity to take some photos…

Don’t worry Mum, the fire looks worse in the photos than it actually was and it quickly burnt down to a nice and toasty bed of coals.

The next morning I woke early (as I do) and with lots to do I got straight to work. Got to get this water tank finished, but first I had to go for a wander about the block. Important to get an idea of how much water was in the dams and the tank since we were here last, and I know it is the question that everyone always asks!!. Had been a dry hot summer and you could see that the water in the dams was slowly receding.

The front dam was starting to be very low, although the second dam still had a fair bit of water even if it had dropped almost a metre since my last trip.

Good news was we had roughly 3500 litres of water in the tank 🙂

About 9am after killing time, drinking coffee and exploring the land, I headed off to the hardware store in town to get the pipe and fittings I needed to install an overflow. This is where I hit my first country town roadblock…. the hardware store was closed!!!! A new sign in the window informed me that they were now a Monday to Friday store and closed Saturday and Sunday…. crap!

I returned to Little Duna (after sneaking in a latté at the café) and found the rest of the family starting to wake. Fiona was already getting started on a batch of pancakes for the kids. I informed her of the bad luck with the hardware store and said we had no choice but to drive into Benalla before the water tank shop (where I bought the tank) closed as well.

We cooked up breakfast, scoffed it down and jumped in the car. Luckily the water Tank shop was open, and it wasn’t long before we were heading back to Little Duna with the bits I needed.

The rest of my day was spent digging a trench behind the shed and installing the overflow. Ground was as hard as concrete, and the 30 degree plus heat didn’t help either. A good couple of hours later though and we had the overflow installed. Luckily I remember to take a before and after photo to show what I had done.

Job done 🙂

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, riding the quad and a bit of shooting at the practice range with the .22

From time to time Fi would have us pose for a photo as she tried out the different settings to get a good photo. Apparently just using the “auto” function is for amatures (like me) and you get a much better photo if you do it manually adjusting for the light, focus and exposure!!

Not even the dogs were safe, although Ruby was not keen on the camera and ran as soon as Fi tried to photograph her.

As I said, everyone got photographed, except of course Fiona who was always behind the camera… if only someone had managed to get a photo of her to pay her back….

Hehe… caught her Sunday morning cooking breakfast in the van…. I know I know, very amature using the auto shoot function!!!

LOL – Yes I am a dead man now….

Anyway…. The only other thing to mention from that weekend was the weather on the Saturday night, you see the forecast was for a thunderstorm to pass through. We cooked dinner early and got a good fire going so the kids could cook marshmallows, then while the kids retired to bed, Fi and I settled around the fire until the storm arrived.

While waiting, I got a call from Dad to see if we were surviving the wild weather. “Nothing here” I informed him.

“Wow!” he exclaimed, “The storm is fierce back here in Melbourne!”

I checked the radar and you could certainly see that Melbourne was getting smashed with very heavy rains.

Meanwhile Fi and I were sitting outside admiring the stars!! I checked the radar up North and could see the storm was approaching in a long straight line from the west, so we sat back and waited for what was going to be a ripper storm that would fill our water tank and wash off some of the dust.

We are bout half way between Euroa and Benalla on this map.

So it was about 11pm by the time we felt the first drops. We quickly packed up the chairs as the winds picked up. Fi disappeared into the van, but me loving a good storm, I stood outside under the annex to watch it pass.

With a bang it hit… Wind, Rain, Lightning…. all the makings of a good storm!

I think it didn’t even last 10 minutes!!! What a let down. The ground was still dry by the time it had past!

With nothing left to do, I poured water on the fire (yep didn’t even put that out) and retired for an early night. Lucky I was exhausted anyway from my afternoon of digging a trench in rock like ground!

So that our quick weekend up to Little Duna to finish the water tank. As we packed on the Sunday, we realized that the very next weekend was the Labor Day weekend and we had invited Bridget and Stu to come up for the weekend.

You can imagine how excited Zac was that we would be coming back two weekends in a row rather than sitting at home playing computer games…. hehe… at least we didn’t have to pack everything up as we would be back in just a few days. I couldn’t even be bothered winding away my power cords thinking they would be fine for a week…. seems strange I mention that doesn’t it???

So anyway, back at work I once again rang Ranbuild to inform them they could arrange the council inspection.

“They won’t actually need to see inside the shed will they?” I asked

“Yes they will” I was informed

“Umm, but it is locked!!”

After a few swear words muttered under my breath about something they could have mentioned last time we spoke, I replied “Lucky I’m up there next weekend, just arrange the inspection for the following week and I’ll leave the access door closed but unlocked…”

So inspection was booked for Tuesday after the long weekend, but enough of that I have to tell you about Labor Day weekend first.

As I mentioned before, we had invited Bridget and Stu up for the weekend with their son Thomas (aged 4) and Rosie (aged 8 months). Given Bridget had never been to Violet Town before, she was a little apprehensive as to what she was getting herself in for, and they were staying in the chalet (AKA the Brock 07 van) and not sure how the kids would go, so they decided to just come up for the one night on the Saturday.

We on the other hand headed up Friday night after work as usual.

We spent Saturday morning bumming around the place as Tara did her art work, Jess played some totem tennis and well Zac complained about being up here again for the second weekend in a row.

My Saturday morning didn’t start so well.

I may have had a few cans around the fire Friday night and it was well after 2am by the time Fi and I retired. Needless to say I woke before everyone else Saturday morning and all I wanted was a cup of coffee…. Lucky I had the generator running so I could boil the kettle.

I fired up the generator and headed back to the van to put the kettle on. After a few minutes of waiting for the kettle to boil I realized that something was wrong… we had no power in the van.

Must have pulled the plug out of the caravan I thought. So I wandered outside to check the plugs… caravan looked ok, but I removed and replugged it anyway. I returned to the van, but discovered there was still no power.

It was as I was heading out to check the generator connections that I realized the cord was running on the otherside of the path to where I normally run it. As I approached I also realized there was a break in the cord!!! Some animal had chewed through the bloody cable!!!! Wasn’t such a great idea leaving them out for the week after all 🙁

In a panic with exposed wires on the dew wetted ground, I ran over and turned the generator off before realizing I could have just cut the power output and left it running, or maybe even pulled out the cord! Oh well.

Lucky for me I had a spare power cable in the van and I removed the broken one replacing it with a good one. I walked back to the generator and turned the key to fire it up and again and…. it wouldn’t start 🙁

Thinking it was that stupid fuse again I returned to the car to get my tools and pulled the generator out to remove the back cover. Fuse was all good, but by now I was covered in black soot and getting grumpy from lack of caffine. I put it all back together and tried it again before deciding that the battery simply didn’t have enough juice to restart it.

I grabbed the car and attempted to jump start the battery, but after a few goes of nothing working I put the multimeter on the battery and realized it simply wasn’t charging off the car?? Very strange. I figured maybe because the car was cold it simply didn’t yet have enough charge in the car battery. So, I took the car for a drive around the block… now being in the country we have a very large block, so it was about 20 minutes before I returned to try again. The car had had a really good run by now with most of y trip being done at 100kmph,  but once again no charge was getting into the battery???

I turned the car off, kicked the dirt and cursed a few times before I thought I would give it one more go… I started the car again and almost immediately was able to get enough charge into the battery to start the generator!!! Cannot explain it, but was about an hour and a half wasted before I got that coffee and as you can imagine it put me in a bad mood to start the day.

While some coffee flowing through my veins certainly helped my mood, things only got worse as I thought I would tighten those bolts on the Quad bike wheels. You may remember from the boys weekend that Paul had noticed we were missing a few bolts, so I was worried I would lose some more and the quaddie would be out of action.

So as Fi started cooking breakfast, I grabbed the tools and tightened the bolts. Was about on the third one that I slipped and my little finger slid up the rim of the wheel removing a good long sized chunk of skin 🙁

I gave up on repairs there and then as I ran to the caravan for a bandaid trying my best to clean the soot and grease from around the cut. Damn did it hurt, and didn’t get much better for the rest of the weekend 🙁 Not a good way to start my day.

There was some good news though as Mike had donated his old BBQ to the block. This means we were able to cook up a feast for breakfast without worrying about a gentle breeze taking all the heat away from the hotplate. Has made cooking so much better…even if my finger was still throbbing and some stupid animal chewed through my cord preventing me from having a much needed coffee….

Anyway… the food helped and I was in a much better mood by the time Bridget and Stu arrived in the early afternoon.

The kids were all glad to have more friends to play with, especially Tara and Jess who were absolutely smitten with little Rosie.

We spent the afternoon having rides on the quadbike and showing Bridget and Stu around the block. Fi, Bridget and the girls decided to take a walk into town, leaving myself Stu and Zac back at Little Duna.

Now in the driveway beyond the shed on the way over to the camp, the dry and dusty conditions had turned a section of the track with no gravel into a very fine powder. Everytime we drove through it we would leave a massive plume of dust hanging in the air. Problem was as we drove through it more and more we were creating ruts that I knew would become an issue once it rained and the powder turned back into hard ground.

Without a grader to smooth it out, Stu and I came up with the idea of dragging one of the large tractor tyres along behind the car to try to smooth it out. Problem was I soon realized that going back and forth created these amazing billowing dust clouds!! I would drive through as fast as I could, then turn around and wait as the car disappeared in a billowing cloud of dust that followed. For a few moments, visibility was almost nothing until the dust had passed.

Was the last time coming through that I turned the car around in front of the shed and waited for the billowing dust that we heard a loud BANG!!!

The rope had come off, sending the tyre rolling straight into the side of the shed….oops!

There was a good sized dent and some black marks where the tyre had hit, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. We used a little petrol to remove the black marks and panel beated the dent out. No harm, no foul but was the end of our fun.

I said to Zac, you had better not tell your mother…. so of course as soon as he saw her coming up the driveway he couldn’t wait to run up and tell her thinking it would get me in trouble… LOL… Fi just shrugged rolled her eyes at me!

Saturday night for dinner, we headed to the pub in town and had a great meal. The waitress offered to take this photo of our table which I think turned out a beauty.

We had a great time and were really glad that Bridget and Stu came up for the weekend. Was relaxing and fun, and I think Rosie had a good time even if she was only able to sit on a rug most of the time.

Thomas on the other hand had a ball running around (barefooted) and I know the girls enjoyed showing him the tree bridge and the dams.

Fi and Bridget kept each other company, and Stu and I entertained ourselves with the auger and some ants nests…. probably best you don’t ask…

Oh and before I forget, I was showing Stu the second dam (hadn’t changed much from the week before) and I said I have no idea how deep it was. I grabbed a stick that was about 2m long, reached out and stuck it in to show the depth and almost lost my balance as most of the stick disappeared into the murky water!!! Still no idea just how deep this thing is, but we estimate it must be close to 4 or 5 meters deep when it is full in winter!!!!

Anyway, it is getting late and has taken me longer than I though to write this blog. I still have to update you on our Easter trip and the trip last weekend to collect wood, but that may have to wait for another post. Will try to get it done in the next few days, so keep an eye out for the next update.

Cheers and sorry it has been so long coming!

PS – We left the shed unlocked and the council inspected it as planned on the Tuesday. We got a final sign off and I received the Certificate of Final Inspection in the mail about a week later. Another job done and done 🙂