well, six weeks after the offers were accepted, we signed cheques for half a million and then it was move time again!


although some of us didn't take it too seriously!


After a few days of ute trips the big truck came-


Lovely house, but those gardens don't look like me!!


We bought it for the "swamp" at the back. Aussie doesn't have real swamps, but this will do- there are a couple of little streams running through the gully there.

The house layout is just great! All the living areas are at the back, facing North (Orange is colder than it is hotter!) with a nice view from being two storeys high.


This is East-


This is more North-


and this is West-


and THIS is lying in bed! Through the gap in the leaves I can see where the ring road around Orange to the North joins the older North road, and see the lights of the trucks at night. That's the strawberry garden inside the avairy!

This was the lounge when we bought it-


and now it looks like this-


we live in the office of course


with the garage through one door & the dining/kitchen through the other. The other two walls are mainly glass, to the East and a sliding door North.


Our first meal! Fish & chips with wine!


The local birds are most upset, as the previous owner (who built the house) didn't have cats or dogs-


So, now we have time to return to shooting. Unfortunately the first time we went was the last shoot of the year.. and it poured!!! That is rain that is causing the faint streaks in the air, and those are raindrops on the end of the barrel! So the first three weeks of December have already made it one of the wettest, just as Ken Ring predicted a couple of years ago on predictweather.com The drought has broken this year!

Well, with Christmas out the way and New Year just gone we are settling in and mostly unpacked.

Today we were standing on the deck when two cockatoos flew into the walnut tree with all the noise and rioting that accompany them.


We are standing two storeys high, and the tree is a good three storeys high, but it took no time for Asti & Merlot to suddenly be interested.


One cockatoo left, but the other was tougher, and Merlot was keen...


However, once she was within a couple of metres the second cocky flew off to the gumtrees next door to sit there and swear at the cats...


Neal, whom we bought the house from, said the cockatoos come every year and raid the walnuts. It might be harder this year!

This morning we found a guest in the aluminium kitchen window. He has legs so he is most welcome, although being only about 70mm long he is fruit-fly sized, not housefly sized!



Then in the lemon tree we found caterpillars.. about the size of my little finger! A few young ones..


and half a dozen mature ones. We will try and secure a chrysalis to see what they turn into, but whatever it is they will be big!

Ah- a little Google work and we find they are Large Orchard Butterflies.

http://www.geocities.com/brisbane_butters/Orch_butt.htm

Well, those damm cockatoos have stripped the walnut trees of most the nuts and they chew the ends off the new branches.


I can lie in bed with a cup of tea listening to the steady rain of walnuts crashing through the leaves to the ground. They don't eat many, but they break hundreds off- The cats have lost interest too!


Next summer it will be catapult & ball-bearing time!


The weather has been a bit like this recently-


So Dijo set her camera up and shot stacks of digital photos to get this view looking up West-


and this. The trees at the bottom are both on our section.

Ashara started 6th Form, or year something or other that used to be University Entrance... anyway, its the first Senior year for 16year-olds, so she has this year and 2009 at school. She was posing in the new uniform although she was more interested in poking me in the tummy!


The rain has turned the tomatoes into triffids


and the random pumpkin that started growing where Neal used to have his compost is running everywhere-

I (Dijo) was out on the deck enjoying the last of the evening watching a few magpies on the fence.


then I spotted the feline in the grass


the magpies spotted her as well and dive bombed her


And this ?

Ok- I'm back from 3weeks in NZ, a great time catching up with people and doing some work on the house at Micawber Pl.

While I was away the new watertank was delivered. I can see why they need a filter to stop things getting in (and out!)


So I marked a hexagon out in the triangle between the house and the boatshed fence.This was the REAL application of 6th form maths!


Once I had the timberwork fitted and level, the concrete truck turned up at 8am one morning. I'd taken the panels off the fence so he could back up and chute the concrete straight into the hole. He was here for less than half an hour and pumped for two minutes! I was still raking it flat when he left, and the plastic bag shows the excess after I screeded it off! Now there's a man who knows his business!


The other little problem was the puddle the hot water cylinder was sitting in under the house. Water was dripping out of the electrics! A half-hour with a sparkie while we changed the element seal fixed it, and he fitted an adjustable thermostat while he was there. So now I can turn the hot water down from 70deg and see if the cylinder lasts another 20years.

I hit the tank project again by cutting a hole in the gutter and dropping a downpipe into the tank. Then I sealed both downpipes at that end of the house. Just to catch every drop I hooked one onto the boatshed as well-


No sooner had I got it together than we had two days of thunderstorms... and the tank was full!


There were a few problems that became apparent, all to do with the fall of the gutters, but I figured I better get started on the Datsun now. I moved the Altezza into the boatshed and spread out the Datsun parts.

Everything on the left has to be fitted to the car on the right!!

While I was contemplating that project an Altezzaclub run came up in Sydney. We headed off at 6.30am to meet the guys in Liverpool, then we convoyed down the edge of the Blue Mountains, South to Picton. I would never have believed Sydney had narrow, tight, winding, hilly roads so close to town!


From there we went to Kangaroo Valley for lunch, a tucked-away little gem of a spot with a road full of 25kph corners winding down the valley walls.


After that we headed South even more while the guys went back up the coast. We turned inland at Gouldburn and went NorthWest for home. 650km later we returned, a 12hour day that was just brilliant except for the 20km of dirt road around Crookwell. We won't be back there again!!

The first frost arrived before the end of daylight saving! Just a light one for a few days..


By then we had tomatoes everywhere and were busy making tomatoe sauce, tomatoe chutney and tomatoe paste!


The butternuts are gigantic, and the first one off weighed 2.5kg!


The EIGHT queensland blue pumpkins are all still going, although now it is April the plants will soon die back.


and although the cockatoos have destroyed our walnut crop, some of the neighbours fall over the fence... :lol:
Being randomly natural they are bigger than shop-bought walnuts.


They sit in the tree not 2m from my desk!

The kitties have been busy helping- they wash the dishes..


bring us bath micies


and bag micies


and breakfast micies.. we were trying to temp Merlot to give the mouse up for crunchies...


and they collapse exhausted from the excitment!

I had put the tank halfway along the end wall of the house. This meant it was at the top of the fall in the gutters, and although the gutters fell 10mm, the whole soffit of the house is curved up in the middle another 10mm. So we had 20mm of water in the gutters after I sealed the downpipes over.

The problem that arose was that the long side of the house has a dip in the gutter, so in the thunderstorm water poured over the edge of the gutter right outside the back door. This I didn't like, so I needed to get that corner downpipe working again. I decided to put a flap valve in the downpipe so I could direct water either to the tank or down the pipe to the drain.

After a lot if thinking I stood on the top of the ladder and cut the side out of the downpipe.


Then I drilled a couple of holes for an axle


I made a plastic mockup of the flap and then copied it in aluminium. The axle was actually a cutdown concrete bolt!


Drilling it was a trick. No vice or drill press, so I laid it in the join of the wooden bench with a lump of steel on it to hold it there, and drilled 2mm pilot holes by hand. The Ramset nail is my centerpunch! :lol:
I put the little bolts through and glued the nuts onto the axle to make them captive nuts, as I cant get at them inside the downpipe!


Putting it together means I can send water over to the tank-


or straight down the drain-



Then the route to the tank... my 6M of downpipe with a fancy flexible end didn't reach, so I reverted to making a straight joint into an angled one and then I could run a d'pipe straight into the tank. This was more highschool trig to work out how much to cut out of the joint for an 8degree bend, drop it in boiling water and glue it closed!!


This is how it all ended up! Now I just need to wait for rain to see if it works!

We are due for a break from the projects as the school holidays approach. This week Dijo is in Mudgee drilling holes and Ashara's last school week is being spent in the local library as 'work experience'. Then this weekend we take Alice & Ashara up to Cobar for a week on Kate's farm. While the girls are horse-riding Dijo and I are off to see a mine dam for her work, then up to the opal fields at Lightning Ridge.

Its 480km to Cobar, then another 600km from Cobar to Lightning Ridge... Then the same back a week later! Aussie is a big place!


We ended up going Orange to Cobar, back over to Nyngan for a couple of days, then up to Lightning ridge for a few days, then back to Cobar via Bourke!

That's all posted here-

http://z12.invisionfree.com/Dijos_travels/...hp?showtopic=35

We went out to Cadia Mine for their open day. They put everyone in buses and drove us around, letting us out here and there. It is a gold mine (NSW's biggest) with an open pit and an underground section. Its only 20minutes South of Orange, so is a local employer here.

Gigantic machinery of course-


150tons empty, 385tons loaded, and $5million each.. they have 20 of them!


They train the drivers on a simulator, like aircraft pilots.


This is the hole


with Ashara for scale

The ore is either trucked out of the hole, or brought from the underground workings by conveyer belt. It is crushed then fed into the ball mills. These grind it down to powder, ready for gold extraction. The mill drum is "B" and is rotated by the magnets around the perimeter at "A"


Back home, Dijo was showering and grabbed her towel, stepped back and stood on the legs of this huntsman... not what she wanted! They're big and worrying, but not particularly dangerous (or so I hear.. :P )


Now that the cockatoos have decimated the walnuts in the tree they are cleaning up any on the ground. The cats have realised they are a little big for a small Abyssinian...


Orange has just had its food week, and although we were up in Lightning Ridge during it we took the time to go to the opening night. Food stalls were flat-out selling food & wine


A big crowd enjoyed themselves greatly! Live music all evening..

By the end of May the garden has died, and although we get frosts we get warm sunny days of 25 deg inside the house.

The strawberry patch inside the bird cage has cabbages/caulis/brussels in amongst the strawberries, along with bok choi & onions.

In the main area I moved a couple of random potatoes, the rhubarb & the silver beet, then spent days digging and chopping the tree out. It was where the X is.

Then I dug a trench along the retaining wall so I could remove the sleepers, put new ones on the bottom and the best old ones on top, with geocloth to stop the soil leaking through the gaps. Dug up cicada lavae, frogs, a couple of other odd underground grubs & plenty of worms.


Continued HERE