Day 26 Gulmarrad Tuesday 3rd July 2012

Hi ,
I successfully restored the electric fence to operation, although truth be told I didn't do anything beyond what I did the other day i.e. make a few insulators from irrigation pipe, fix the broken tapes and trim the undergrowth around the fence. The sheep went through it yesterday leading me to think it wasn't working but they do lack sensibility where pain is concerned. The blade of grass test didn't work. However it is only a small 6kV unit to run 500 metres where as the Parsons Bay one was rated to 90km from memory so a much higher pulse voltage which you could feel 20cm along a blade of grass. Today i connected an alligator clip to the fence and got a nice small spark from the other end of the lead held to the star picket and also to my hand. Carl suggested I educate the sheep by enticing them over and zapping them on the nose with the fence. Funny every time they got close and i pushed the tape towards them they ran off. Maybe they are not so dumb. I then released the horrible porky beast into her electric pen. She treated the tapes with due respect and apart from the geese going crazy when she approached them all was good.

Safe behind the wire. For how long ? who knows? 

Susan meantime was driving around the countryside ordering glass from the plywood templates I hastily cut from her marking up yesterday, buying groceries and picking up her new Nokia 800 Lumina phone. The one with the Windows phone operating system. She is currently wrestling with the technology. It appears that it is not possible to transfer her back up contacts from the Nokia Ovi software used with her old phone into the new phone. There are some suggested ways to do it but none of them work so they all have to be typed in manually. Another giant leap forward for mankind.

This afternoon I tied some more wires on the last clamp plate and set about cutting the beading for the top windows as well as shovelling some gravel to fill the clamp plates under the top windows. The renderer came and dropped off his mixing gear today so the day approaches.

Will be a big day tomorrow as we need to start installing the chicken wire over the bales, which means the window frames have to be in with half the beading, so a big day.

Has been difficult to concentrate on writing tonight as I am trying to provide phone technical support via multiple google searches to she who must be obeyed. Google is my friend. Actually it's a wonder I can still think at all after being subjected to "Being Laura Bingle" on the TV tonight. No wonder channel 10 are going down the tube.

night folks

Cheers Simon