Day 12 Gulmarrad Tuesday 19th June 2012

The glorious grevillea outside out tent doorway.  I only have blurred pictures of visiting birds today, try again tomorrow 

Hi Folks,

Another cool evening here just 9 degrees under the canvas. I was talking to Carl's helper this morning who has lived here for 10 years. She said for the first 5 years the winters were like this, sunny and dry and the next 4 were horribly wet. Maybe our arrival has tipped the balance from wet back to dry. Perhaps an application of chaos theory. Chaos theory applies to the amount of gear we have in the tent at the moment. Mind you it is fairly tidy.

Susan's early morning hairobics

I knew she was in there somewhere

Susan and Misato took Carl's postie van to the auto electrician this morning and popped into town for some supplies.

The new bedding in the chook house

Looking into the chicken yard with the duck/goose/turkey/sheep pen behind.

On her return Susan, brave soul that she is, took on cleaning out the chook house. If the guano was any thicker I am sure a mining lease would have been taken out. I kept my distance as she worked with her face mask on. The geese in the next pen were making a racket since they associate a person in the chook house with feeding time. I am sure the chickens will appreciate their new straw and cleaner perches.

Trimming...trimming

Old grey beard trims the straw beard

I sanded and varnished the window frames for the new room. They are fairly large and fairly heavy. Next job was to align various hay bales in the wall to improve the straightness. It was then onto trimming the walls with the brush cutter. Unusually this had a 4 stroke engine. Whilst it started easily enough it ran fairly erratically. I did the usual things cleaned the air cleaner, cleaned the fuel filter, emptied the fuel etc. It was running better for longer but we need to get some fresh fuel to rule that out of the equation. The trimming of the bales was quite difficult.  I was looking at the neat cut pattern from the previous assembly and it looked quite straight as if from a hedge trimmer. However I am assured it was done with a brush cutter so I will have to lift my game. I finished the outside and had a quick run around our camper. Tomorrow I will do the inside.

Misato is leaving on Monday to go to another Helpex up the road at Evans Head. I think Susan appreciates her doing the cooking since it would fall to her otherwise.

That's about all the news for today.

Cheers Simon