weather woes

13.1.2011 BUILDING NEWS

Our burst of activity did not last long. Once again we are defeated by unforseen circumstances and the weather. Queensland floods are of biblical proportions so in comparison our continual rain, seas of mud and humid conditions are relatively tame. However, they are enough to bring all house building activities to a halt and make life miserable.

John the concrete man came today and he and Edd are organising to buy all the reinforcing iron for the building at one time. I heard statements sounding like ”you’ll need to check that out with Doug” which sounded time consuming. Anything to do with engineering usually takes ages. Another thing was that John was on Stevo’s side about weather to do the plumbing after the foundation. Now we have two on each side!

OTHER NEWS

There is nothing useful we can do here. On Tuesday Edd, Josh and I went out. Edd and Josh wanted to choose a new gun and I was keen to visit garden world. Josh is a bit of a plant addict too but this time I restricted myself to food growing stuff. With such terrible weather I am expecting food prices to rise and am increasing our production here. The rabbits are still a problem but everything seems to be growing well in pots and raised areas. The foxes are getting very bold. Yesterday afternoon one walked right past the donga, amazingly the dogs just ignored it.

I was worried that the fox was after our young goats. Foxes often inspect their hunting sites to plan the raid. It is interesting to see that foxes are almost grey now and look very different to their UK cousins. The young goats are about three months old now and still having milk twice a day. The adults were milking well but with the wet weather they are not going out to graze much and the milk yield has dropped.

We have a flock of huge black cockatoos around making lots of noise. It seems true that they come out of the forest when rain is around. Various birds are raiding the fruit trees but I have no nets to protect the fruit at this stage. It does not seem a priority. Brian’s hill has been taken over by kangaroos but the grass is still green and growing and there seems enough feed for roos and cows.

Josh has re enrolled for his Audiology course and is starting to think about the return to Perth. We hope this will be his final year of study. I keep telling myself that by Xmas next year I will be in my new home and all my kids will have finished their education. What we do then I am not even ready to think about yet. If the climate continues to destabilize at this rate we may all have to rethink our plans.