Wednesday 4th June 2008

Good grief - its June already! The lease on the Kyneton house runs out at the end of the month, so we drag ourselves over there again with the trailer. This load we get the sofa and two of the three air conditioners, plus a few more boxes. Out of the 160 or so boxes delivered from Wadhurst, there's now only a dozen left. Mind you, one of them contains the spare bonnet for the red Mosquito, so size is still a factor. And there's still 3 tables, another air conditioner, a wooden chest, the mower, we need to take the sofabed to the tip... I'm going to stop thinking about it now. At least I remembered to take a photo of this load.

Another thing I meant to show you. This is the Newstead Post Office, where all your snail mail to Green Gully will find its way (when correctly addressed to PO Box 113, Newstead, Vic 3462), and then there is a picture of the McMillan Road mail boxes. I am particularly fond of no. 13 (the rightmost one), which is home to many plastic dinosaurs, snakes, and bugs.

That's a good gap for our mailbox in the middle there, but I wimped out. Yep, that's really why we got a PO Box instead; I couldn't think of something worthy to compete with the dinopost. Its a big thing in Australia, getting your mailbox right. Look, here's a wanky, err, scolarly article on it: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/074793603322545073?cookieSet=1&journalCode=desi Oh bugger, sorry, you have to pay to read the whole thing, but you get the gist from the abstract. My parents have seen some crackers on their perambulations through the great outback. Perfect excuse for recycling your old fridge or microwave oven. These aren't my photos, but thought I'd give you the idea:

Friday 6th June 2008

Our first game with the Newstead Croquet Club. What a great game! We play golf croquet, not Association (in case all you croquet afficianados were wondering), for which we are quite thankful, as the whole roquet-croquet-break thing is frankly a bit much to take in for beginners. Valerie, Kerry, John, Jack and Marge, and oldest member Hazel (late 80's and still going strong!) made us very welcome, and even though the playing surface is a lawn pretty much in name only, we enjoyed ourselves heaps. That's our Friday mornings sorted then. In fact, even though we're the newest members, we live closest to the club, and our privileges include popping over whenever we like for a game. The club is sited on a standard 1/4 acre block in the middle of Newstead village, with a single-room timber-framed and weatherboarded clubhouse with a brick chimney, variously described as originally a shearer's or shepherd's hut. Its small enough to be either, although I think that the quality of the fire place and the decorative pressed tin wall panels point rather towards an actual home... Right. Off to ebay to see if there's any good croquet equipment bargains on the go.

Saturday 7th June 2008

When we bought the GG property, the estate agents sent us a little gift card at a Castlemaine florists, which we finally managed to find today. The gift turned out to be a $20 voucher, thank heavens, rather than a bunch of cut flowers, so we grabbed a bunch of veggie seedlings and a bag of poo, then scratched our heads over where to site the veggie patch. My original idea of behind the water tanks (easy to get to from the kitchen, close to water) is no good because it doesn't get enough sun, so we find a sunny patch up on the top part of the block that is less precipitous than most, and hopefully contains less than 90% rock. The first photo is before any implement touches the site, and the second after about 5 hours of hard digging and rock relocation:

Doesn't look like much, does it? David thinks that what it does look like is a family plot. The seedlings will be staying in their trays for a bit longer, methinks. Apart from the rock redistribution, we also need to sort out some kanga-proof protection.

Sunday 8th June 2008

Many thanks for the kind words expressed in various emails and phone calls for David's erection. Here he is, further extending and generally playing with it. That is a router being fitted. That's pronounced as in "out", not as in "route".

Tuesday 10th June 2008

Back when we bought our Skype (ie internet) phone handset (from Aldi, of course), it was a pretty good price. They seemed to be available for ages afterwards, and indeed got even cheaper, which is the normal Aldi practice before they disappear. However, I managed to misjudge the timing, and when I went in to buy a spare for us and a few for friends and family, they'd all gone from the Bendigo Aldi store, and after having asked the P's to check in Wonthaggi and Jo to check in the city stores to no avail, it wasn't looking good. Yesterday I travelled down to Melbourne for nephew Lachlan's school concert and checked out Sunbury Aldi on the way (no luck), so today I hit the Prahran Aldi, and found no Skype phones, but 2 DVD cabinets, which was rather handy as all our DVDs are still in plastic crates. I also couldn't resist a little steel-framed plastic-covered greenhouse for the littlest veggie plants, a set of 3 walkie talkies for eventual communicating between house and shed, a clothes airer and a second router for David, 'cos its a pain to get the original one out of its table if you want to use it "solo". Not that he's overtly complaining about the lack of sheds, but the original router and table is now in the bathroom, as we had a spot of rain and David didn't want to leave it out on the erection. So this is his subtle hint about wanting his shed, I suspect:

Not that either of us were ever gonna fit in that bath, and yes, that is a Dalek bubble bath. Marks and Spencer had 'em for Chrissy pressies last year; you didn't get one?

Saturday 14th June 2008

A spot of interior DIY - Jaynee puts up some shelves in the laundry, and David assembles the DVD cabinets.

Sunday 15th June 2008

Here's something we haven't done for a while - get a trailer-load from Kyneton. This lot includes the remaining contents of the garden shed (the big box is the Mosquito bonnet), the 2 rugs, sofabed (we've decided to hold on to it after all), gas bbq, the wheelbarrow (obviously, Jaynee!) and even more bleedin' boxes. Greebie is pleased to see his rug again.

Monday 16th June 2008

This morning Jaynee has her first training session as volunteer duty officer at the Newstead RTC, then heads into Castlemaine to hire a Rug Doctor and gets stuck into steam cleaning the two rugs. Greebie would help, but this thing not only sounds like a hoover, but spits in yer eye as well, so he keeps an anxious eye from a safe distance behind the sofa.

Tuesday 17th June 2008

Happy Anniversary to us. Thanks for the cards and best wishes. We decide to visit Maldon, and on the way stop off at the local reservoir, down Fishermans Road. David wanders down the boat ramp in search of the fish:

In Maldon we stop in at the station to have a chat about joining the Victorian Goldfields Railway - see http://www.vgr.com.au/ They will be pleased to have us as volunteers; David will get to play with the trains, and apparently Jaynee can help serving tea, which reminds her of one of the reasons she left Australia in the first place, but never mind... We stop off at Mt Tarrangower and Jaynee climbs the tower to take a few photos of the view. That's David beside the car in the first photo, looking back towards Maldon. He still can't see any fish, tho'.

Here's a 1950ish shot of the tower itself - it was originally the poppet head from the Comet mine in Bendigo. Public access is only allowed to the second stage, which is high enough and windy enough to rearrange your hairdo, thank you kindly.

Later in the day we take a call from the estate agent in Kyneton who is handling the re-letting of Palmer Place; they have someone who wants to view this Saturday. Jaynee has another training morning at the RTC tomorrow, so we'll need to get our skates on to empty the house and clean it before croquet on Friday.

Thursday 19th June 2008

Yesterday afternoon we grabbed a load from Kyneton but were too knackered to unload it till this morning. Then we drove back, reloaded, and spent the afternoon cleaning the house. As of this evening, we're outta there.

So I guess that's mission accomplished: Wadhurst To Green Gully has been achieved! Still, I'll probably faff around putting further blurbs and photos on here, as I seem to have caught the habit. Should I rename any new stuff, tho'? Drop me a line on the guestbook page to let me know what you think.

Saturday 21st June 2008

Is it possible to squeeze another bookcase into the office? We think so. Can you see where it is, yet? (in my best Rolf Harris voice)

Wednesday 25th June 2008

Happy Birthday to nephew Riley for today! It was Greebo's 11th birthday last Monday, and I didn't take any photos. Here's some of him and teddy to make up for it.

The Quarry Hill Croquet Club is visiting us at Newstead this Friday, so David and Jaynee do a spot of mowing. Jaynee gets the BIG mower, aka The Queen.