my best birthday ever

5.4.2012

BUILDING NEWS

Last week passed in a flash as we struggled to cram in more than could reasonably be expected in the available hours. By shear determination we managed to get three bedrooms usable, and the rest of the house cleaned of building rubbish, before we collected our friends Lou and Marie from the airport on Tuesday morning.

The rendering has started on the east wing wall and the inside of the house is done except for the wet room. I have sealed the bedroom floors the passage outside the bedrooms and two thirds of the floor in the solar hall. I wish I had been able to do more but it takes 24 hours for the floor top dry after the scrub wash and then four hours for the first sealer coat to dry. Ideally it needs four coatings to start with and each should be dried for four hours before the following layer is applied. I find it next to impossible to keep people off the floors for this length of time.

Edd set up the basins in the wood tops he made so that the plumbers were able to fix them to the water and drains! Yes, It is a miracle. We now have flushing toilets and three working basins. The plumbers had to get one part delivered by taxi to complete their work, but the taxi driver was interested in under ground housing so he did not mind. We are still dependent on cables for to power the lights but in theory the solar water heating should be working. All we need now is somewhere to cook!

My big challenge was to lime render the back, arms and sides of the couch benches under the ingle nook. I had never worked with lime plaster before and was surprised how differently it behaved compared with cement render. It is really sloppy like plaster and needs time to dry off before it can be smoothed down. I was very careful not to spill it everywhere because I am sick of scrubbing lime off the floors.

Edd and I love sleeping in the new house. It is so peaceful and the temperature is never out of a comfortable living range. I was at last able to unwrap the guest bedroom furniture I had brought and set up the rooms. This bit I love because I can play with lots of beautiful colours. One of the plumbers made us laugh because he asked when we were getting our furniture out of storage. I wish!

OTHER NEWS

On Sunday Steels Creek community members got together to open the new community centre building. The original, old school room was saved from the fires by neighbours, but all the surrounding out buildings and the toilets were burnt down. The community was given a grant to use restoring things and making major improvements but local people worked hard to get the designs and building done. I was very impressed by a memorial quilt that the stitchers had made. It depicted the fires and the buildings and included the names of people who died.

On Monday I thoroughly clean out the donga. Al and Edd moved all the heavy furniture to the new house and I was able to clean in corners that have been unreachable for months. It was pretty gruesome, but I feel really good now it has all been tackled. Some how it is important to clean out all our energy from the cramped donga so that we have a fresh start in our new home. I also wanted a clean bedroom up here in case Marie and Lou could not face living with out power or bedroom doors.

Last night we crowned everything off with a party in the ruins. Bo cooked a beautiful cake (it was my 64th birthday) with meringue, chocolate and lots of berries, Peter and Thea brought amazing sausages and Al made a chicken salad that was well spiced. I roasted pumpkin and potatoes with rosemary and Marie found some garlic, picked tomatoes and basil and made another special salad.
It was another one of those wonderful autumn evenings with no wind an almost full moon and perfect temperatures. The hour changed to daylight saving at the start of the week so it was dark early. After the feast Peter lit the huge pile of burnable waste that we had collected over summer and we had a huge fire to watch.

Peter and Thea know Lou because we all met up when we worked with the Aboriginal people in the Tanami desert. This meant we all shared common experiences and could joke about old times. Peter and Theo are very happy because they have just brought themselves a new home up the hill at Kinglake but Lou is still working in a remote mining community in Western Australia. His dream is to return to his roots in America when he retires and live quietly on the land.

His wife Marie is from the Philippines. Today we had to deliver some goats to Healesville so we all had a picnic lunch in the forest at Badger Weir. On the way home Marie told me about her family and how they lived. I did not really know much about the Philippines, so I was really interested. The last time we saw Marie and Lou, was when we met up in Alaska around eighteen years ago, which meant that we all had a lot of catching up to do. Their visit has given Edd and I a good reason to stop work over the Easter holiday. We really needed to stop, so this is great.

I think yesterday evening was my best birthday event ever. We all laughed and laughed and ate fantastic food around a campfire. Wayne had to do his course so he came over earlier in the day with offerings of wine and flowers but it was lovely having Bo and kids and Al to represent younger generations. I cannot see how anyone could have anything in life better than this sort of evening. We are such very, very, lucky people.