Hi All,
Once again we were working on our suntans today. The nice thing about working here is the view over the sea to Bruny and the sea breeze keeping things cool. Ann says, "If you live in Tasmania and you don't have a view it's your own fault" Must admit we have been a bit spoiled over here as we certainly can't complain about the scenery. Now the weather is a different matter!
What were the highlights of the day? Susan finished her mammoth decking project and did some mowing. Her fingers are so arthritic she can't pull the cord on the mower unless it is a matter of life and death. Interesting the Toro mower has a 5 year warranty on being guaranteed to start in the first two pulls. It does start very easily unlike the chainsaw when you don't get it right like today. Bloody thing would not start even with Aidan the young gun pulling the cord at a 100km/h. It was put to one side so he didn't wear the cord out like last time. I popped the cover off removed the plug, blew on it and put it back in. It started first pull on half choke. Obviously i flooded it the first time. I did put a new chain on beforehand and thought i had stuffed something up. I had as i found out at the first branch. The chain was in backwards which took about a minute to fix. Twit! After producing a trailer load of wood with the saw and splitter for Ann's shack from the pile of rotting and resprouting willow logs next door i adjourned for beer.
We have booked a night passage on the Spirit for Easter Sunday sleeping in the recliner lounges because they are cheaper than cabins. We arrive in Melbourne at 700am which gives a good few hours to get away from Melbourne towards our next destination. There has been ongoing discussion about the next destination with some varied ideas and scenarios. Just as well time is on our side at the moment as there is much to think about.
Susan has forewarned Nubeena of our weekend visit so we can look forward to community dinner on Saturday and dinner in the Hub cafe Sunday night and seeing baby Lola of course
Today's minor fly in the ointment is the compact camera i bought on Ebay can't go to the PO box here since it has a Lithium Ion battery and they are banned from air freight. Actually it could do as long as it went by road. Anyway its going by road courier to the street address here. The seller reckons two or three days from today. From Sydney to here in three days now that would be a miracle.Which means a return journey here to pick it up, although if the timing is perfect we could pick it up on Monday from Ann at her shack. However since we live in an imperfect world i choose to not even think that is likely to happen. Susan makes a good point. If Li-ion batteries can't be air freighted what about all the laptops that go by air! Maybe they figure it is safer to have them burst into flames mid flight on the owners lap. Who knows? Another of life's mysteries.
Cheers Simon
Day 383 Woodbridge 14th February 2012
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| Giovanni's chocolate basket |
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| BBQ and tables |
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| Varnished setting adjacent BBQ |
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| Pondman! alias Kevin |
Hi Folks,
First off a lovely little Valentines Day treat from Susan. The chocolate basket and contents crafted by Giovanni at his chocoloate shop in Kettering. He has the best chocolate i have tasted!
Today was more of the same workwise not that that is a bad thing. Susan ploughed on with the decking with an end in sight. I rotated the rustic BBQ and did a general tidy up with the brush cutter and the mowers which took the rest of the day. The line wouldn't bump feed on the brush cutter. I had the head apart about 10 times trying to work out why the new square section line was jamming. Eventually the penny dropped when i decided to rewind it from scratch. Some one had wound it on in the wrong direction!
Kevin has been slaving away in the dams chopping out the vegetation. I on Anns instruction knocked down all the rushes around the edge. They have now gone from looking like ponds to water hazards on a golf course with neat trimmed edges with nothing to stop your ball rolling in.
After a beer i installed the syncing software on Anns computer so that her mail and documents are backed up with one click. Mind you she still has to plug the drive in and "click".
Another delicious roast chicken and vegetables for tea. Susan made tea and lunch today.
Cheers Simon
Day 382 Woodbridge Monday 14th February 2012
Hi readers,
A second unintentional late night in a row! My eyes will be bleary in the morning.
Moving back to the start of the day. First off it was a public holiday here today for Hobart Regatta Day! Susan was scheduled to go to Kingston to pick up another 10 litres of varnish. However i ended up going since some 44 gallon drums were required from the "recycle shop" at the dump. This came about from my allotted task of the day which was to cut the drum here in half to make a BBQ for Thursday. The drum was an old oil drum that had been used for waste oil and diesel. I thought better of cutting it with the angle grinder so it was taken to the dump. The dump had no suitable drums so plan b was Ann reclaiming half the drum she gave to here neighbour.
Susan continued on with the eternal varnishing which is getting fairly close to completion.
The BBQ construction was pretty simple and it was soon finished so i progressed to using the hand mower on some of the areas too scary for the ride on.
Tea was late today since Ann and Kevin went off snorkeling with Aidan. Susan was exhorting me to go take a picture of the BBQ for the blog however when Ann arrived home she decided she wanted it oriented in the other direction!
After their return whilst waiting for the casserole to cook a conversation thread led to Ann getting out her scrap books to show us the story of her retrieval by helicopter in Peru in 1964 when she contacted pulmonary oedema at 13500 feet. The mission was initiated by the intervention of then PM Bob Menzies.
After tea i was about to turn in and scribble the blog out when the conversation turned to Dan Browns DaVinci code which Kevin is reading and it's sequel Angels and Demons the movie of which i happened to have in my portable movie collection. Ann wanted to watch the first half hour so i trotted it out and we started watching. She did watch the first half hour before nodding off and rejoining us for the last 20 minutes. We sat up until midnight and then sat up doing our computer thing with lights out at 130.
The booking system for the ferry was broken today so we don't know our departure date yet!
Night folks
Cheers Simon
A second unintentional late night in a row! My eyes will be bleary in the morning.
Moving back to the start of the day. First off it was a public holiday here today for Hobart Regatta Day! Susan was scheduled to go to Kingston to pick up another 10 litres of varnish. However i ended up going since some 44 gallon drums were required from the "recycle shop" at the dump. This came about from my allotted task of the day which was to cut the drum here in half to make a BBQ for Thursday. The drum was an old oil drum that had been used for waste oil and diesel. I thought better of cutting it with the angle grinder so it was taken to the dump. The dump had no suitable drums so plan b was Ann reclaiming half the drum she gave to here neighbour.
Susan continued on with the eternal varnishing which is getting fairly close to completion.
The BBQ construction was pretty simple and it was soon finished so i progressed to using the hand mower on some of the areas too scary for the ride on.
Tea was late today since Ann and Kevin went off snorkeling with Aidan. Susan was exhorting me to go take a picture of the BBQ for the blog however when Ann arrived home she decided she wanted it oriented in the other direction!
After their return whilst waiting for the casserole to cook a conversation thread led to Ann getting out her scrap books to show us the story of her retrieval by helicopter in Peru in 1964 when she contacted pulmonary oedema at 13500 feet. The mission was initiated by the intervention of then PM Bob Menzies.
After tea i was about to turn in and scribble the blog out when the conversation turned to Dan Browns DaVinci code which Kevin is reading and it's sequel Angels and Demons the movie of which i happened to have in my portable movie collection. Ann wanted to watch the first half hour so i trotted it out and we started watching. She did watch the first half hour before nodding off and rejoining us for the last 20 minutes. We sat up until midnight and then sat up doing our computer thing with lights out at 130.
The booking system for the ferry was broken today so we don't know our departure date yet!
Night folks
Cheers Simon
Day 381 Woodbridge Sunday 12th February 2012
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| Inspecting a boat |
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| marina from the Mermaid Cafe |
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| Simon, Kevin and Ann on the car free top deck |
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| Yes it was a bit breezy! |
Hi All
A fine sunny day here of mild temperature.
Susan continued her varnishing this morning while i brush cut and mowed around the long beds. At 1 we adjourned with Kevin to Kettering to the wooden boat festival which was pretty understated. Ann shouted us a BBQ lunch and a coffee at the Mermaid cafe while we awaited the ferry. We took a ride on the ferry to Bruny and back for free as we were on foot. This allowed us to observe the sailing race albeit from a distance. back at Kettering we walked to the point and watched the boats come in. To complete our Kettering experience Ann shouted us a drink at the pub. Had to chuckle when they told one of the patrons they don't do meals on a Sunday night.
Back home Susan decided the weather was so good she would do some more oiling. I after some delay did some more mowing while Kevin trimmed around the garden beds.
Susan knocked up a frittata for tea which was quite late at 830. In the meantime i went mad and bought a camera on Ebay. Its a Nikon with super zoom and also does HD video. My plan is to use this out walking cutting my current load from about 2kg in a big camera bad to 450grams in a small one. Hopefully it will arrive here before we leave on Friday fingers crossed. We will book the return ferry to the big island tomorrow and that will allow us to plan the days between now and then. Well that's tonights plan anyway.
Cheers for now
Simon
Day 380 Woodbridge Saturday 11th February 2012
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| Emporer penguins at the museum |
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| Now which way is the museum from here? |
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| Signal station Mount Nelson |
Hi All,
Our day off today. We left the house around 11 and headed to Hobart.
We had a quick stroll around the market at Salamanca. They do have a casual area so the stalls do change from week to week. We said hello to Ann and on the way out i purchased a flip chart of Tasmanian trees.
We drove to a park closer to the Baha'i Centre. We wanted to visit as not for the purposes of conversion but because a>the cafe is supposed to be very good and b>the building is supposed to be of sustainable construction. Unfortunately the cafe was closed and because of conferences in progress we couldn't really look around so it was a bit of a lost cause apart from finding a really poorly designed pedestrian crossing where 2 cars drove through after we crossed while the light was still red.
We then used the portable GPS to find the museum & art centre. The hilarity of this was revealed when we returned to the car, see the picture. Although to be fair we were more concerned about grinding noises from the back of the car on the kerb when i reversed than noticing the surroundings. The building is being renovated so there were only a couple of exhibits. However the Antarctic one took a couple of hours and we did skim through it a little bit. We had a pretty decent little lunch and good coffee at the museum cafe when we arrived.
We called into the the Lark Distillery on our way back and had a pretty ordinary coffee.
Departing Hobart Susan suggested we visit Mount Nelson the site of the old signal station next to the Southern Outlet road.
The views were quite good however for some reason the toilets were closed as was the cafe/bistro.
We returned to Woodbridge and had some excellent rump steak for tea and slouched around watching television.
Tomorrow i believe we are going to the wooden boat festival at Kettering. It's quite a bus weekend what with the Hobart Cup tomorrow,the Hobart regatta and the Festivale in Launceston.
Night Folks
Simon
Mount Nelson
Day 379 Woodbridge Friday 10th February 2012
Hello readers,
The days continue to flow. Susan has abandoned the idea that 2012 is going to be the year of a cataclysm. I finished the outdoor setting today with a good thick single coat of marine varnish. We can sit on it for a BBQ tea tomorrow night i think. Other than that i was driving Ann's car around by the creek moving the cut bull rushes into a drying pile. Kevin has been very industrious and the dams now look about twice their normal size. Susan continued on with the deck. This is a big job. She also prepared lunch (soup) and tea (pasta) all to the usual high standard. Later in the afternoon we knocked together a storage rack. I also showed Kevin how to use the coffee machine. Seeing as he only has long black it's a pretty easy job to make his own.
Tomorrow he goes to the market with Ann and we have a day off. We will visit the museum and art gallery and probably the market. I also want to walk over the Tasman Bridge except i will probably have to do that by myself.
Glorious weather and a good fun day. Finally a summer. Mind you it was only about 20.
Cheers Simon
The days continue to flow. Susan has abandoned the idea that 2012 is going to be the year of a cataclysm. I finished the outdoor setting today with a good thick single coat of marine varnish. We can sit on it for a BBQ tea tomorrow night i think. Other than that i was driving Ann's car around by the creek moving the cut bull rushes into a drying pile. Kevin has been very industrious and the dams now look about twice their normal size. Susan continued on with the deck. This is a big job. She also prepared lunch (soup) and tea (pasta) all to the usual high standard. Later in the afternoon we knocked together a storage rack. I also showed Kevin how to use the coffee machine. Seeing as he only has long black it's a pretty easy job to make his own.
Tomorrow he goes to the market with Ann and we have a day off. We will visit the museum and art gallery and probably the market. I also want to walk over the Tasman Bridge except i will probably have to do that by myself.
Glorious weather and a good fun day. Finally a summer. Mind you it was only about 20.
Cheers Simon
Day 378 Woodbridge Thursday 9th February 2012
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| Sanding |
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| Kevin in the pond |
Hi Folks,
We continued on with our "big" tasks. Susan working on the decks and me on the outdoor setting. Susan was also engaged in slicing up about 40kg of plums.
I was able to secure a mixing whisk and a rechargeable drill to mix the two pack waterproof sealer. All four batches seemed to go off without a hitch as i followed the directions to the letter especially the induction time which is when you let it sit before using.
Susan is working around the decks section by section with another couple of days to go to finish depending on the weather.
Kevin is in the waders cutting the bullushes loading them onto a lilo cut from an old inflatable boat and carting them back to shore. The mud at the bottom of the ponds is pretty pongy. He has been out trying to take pictures of the local wild life tonight with out much luck.
After work we went to the pub for a talk on th settlement of Australia and Tasmania by the indigenous inhabitants. The colonisation was explained in terms of sea levels and the fact that colonisers tended to advance 25km per generation. Since it was held at the pub we aso had a couple of drinks. It was an interesting talk. They apparently have a presentation every Thursday.
Tea was a nice roast chicken with more wine.
Life is pretty good. We have decided to leave here around the 19th and travel to Nubeena to catch up with a few people. Then we will go up the east coast via hobart so Susan can have a check up on her nose.
That's the news of the day
cheers Simon
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