Every Day I’m Shovelling

So – the shed frame is up – but has been tethered to the truck for stability and safety until we concrete in the footings.

The FB drafted in my help with this one, after he explained that I would certainly make this job quicker, than him just by himself.  He did do all the concreting in the bottom of the footings, and that was not as effective  as it could have been, so I had to swing off a shovel.

The concrete mixer we have borrowed to do the job belongs to my cousin, and has had a previous life as a concrete mixer for a the local council.

It is VERY noisy, but does the job – and it saves all that mixing that humans would have to do, so we are glad to have it.

The road was very wet, and we erred on the side of caution and walked across the creek – and over to the shed.

Because of the amount of rain – the creek was up and just on the edge of the limit of my wellies on the trip over.  So in our collective wisdom, we decided to duct tape my wellies to by trousers – up to just over my knees, in an attempt to keep the water out. 

The day of the concreting is showering weather, not cold but certainly wet.  Because there is no where to keep out of the rain as yet, we put up the portable gazebo that we bought for shade at Christmas time.

The water has to be collected from the creek in 20l buckets and walked back to the work area.  The cement needs to be kept dry – until such time as it is mixed with one shovel to 5 shovels of aggregate into the mixer, with just enough water to make it the consistency of a good custard or white sauce.  My old gloves were a bit worse for wear, so prior to commencement , the duct tape came out again – and they were ducted taped to my wrists.

So, I shovelled.  And mixed.  And poured into the wheel barrow.  And the FB pour and shovelled on the other end.  And it rained, and rained and rained.

At one point, recognising the irony of carting water back from the creek, when it was just falling out of the sky, we tried to come up with a way to catch the water off the roof of the canopy.

You know the way that water collects on a tent roof or the roof of a marquee.  So you can see it from the underside and push up on the bugle so the water drops out?  Well – if you really need that water to go into a bucket – it won’t.  No matter how hard you try to make it flip off the roof and into the bucket.

Mostly it just runs down the inside of your shirt sleeve. 

As we walked back in the rain, it was pretty clear that the creek had come up quite a bit – so I felt pretty smug about the ducted taped wellington boots.  The FB just cut to the chase and went in barefoot.  A brave brave man.... that water is FREEZING!

So the best bit is being able to make our mark in the footings.  In 100  years time at least they will know which crazy people decided this was a good idea!

Barn Raising

With the footings all completed with concrete and reo in the bottom, and the material on site, it is time to get something up out of the ground.

Because the shed is a kit (come on we are handy – but that is taking it a bit too far) the bits and pieces are pretty much all in the right length/order.

So the forever boy spent the first half of the day pulling all the bits out, counting them, making sure everything was there etc, whilst I pretty much slept in and read.

The site is about 2 km from the shack, and I am not what you would call a morning person, so the Forever Boy (herewith referred to as FB)  gets up early, heads over to site, get things in order and then comes back for breakfast.

I play 1950’s house wife (shack wife???) and cook breakfast and clean up.  Realistically breakfast is really brunch so there is plenty of sleep in time.

So I go back over to site and the ‘ribs’ of the shed are lying on the ground in order.  So for a shed this size there are 5 ribs.

After they have been *erm* modified to be for purpose – being extended because of the design of our floor (not a slab) – with extra pieces of steel welded/bolted on, they are pretty darn tall.  It is interesting they way that all the elements of the structure are not terribly heavy separately, but when you put them together they certainly get some heft.

Anyway, the challenge is to get the very first ‘rib’ up.  Again – I am not sure how they do this in the construction industry.. but it probably wasn’t like this.

Step 1. Find two able bodied office workers, whose extent of physical exertion for the past 6 months has been walking to the pub.

Step 2.  Get them to push/pull up a shed piece that has to be located inside a footing hole  that has been dug by a post hole digger that has an aversion to straightness.

Step 3.   Raise ribs – ensuring that the extended length does not get caught on the reo.

Step 4.  Swear and yell.

Step 5. Realise that that is not the place you want the rib to be and there is nothing to secure it to.

Step 6. Lower the section of shed.

Repeat from Step 2.

Well – you don’t have to have too many repeats. 

We did eventually raise one rib and having tied it to the tractor for support – with two timber props and the help of a saw horse, raised another one.

FB then installed some girts to help with the sturdiness of the construction – and to stop it falling over, and then got some real help (not me) to push the other three ribs into place.

The real help ( of my brother in law, and my mum's boyfriend)  was much better in that they whinged less, and were much stronger than me. 

The roof purloin got installed through an innovative use of a tractor, a pallet and help from my brother in Law.  There was also a rope involved – but not to minimise the chance of the installer falling off – but more to help the tractors hydraulics so that the pallet didn’t slip off.

A bit like this: 

This picture is off a ‘what not to do’ website.  This is Very similar to what was done – even down to the rope! 

Of course it was much higher (like 4.6 m off the ground and it was windy.  Of course.  But at least the hazards were recognized!

At the end of the week – we have a recognizable shed.

Can you see what I mean by "ribs" now?

A naked shed, but a shed nonetheless.

Very pleased with myself.  With the shed on the RHS of the pic, and Mt Superbus in the background.

The Tale of Florrie the Lorry

Florrie has been doing some good work for us going to and fro from KTown carrying the bits and pieces for our new home.

As you may know, the trip to the site has some.....challenges.  Up hill , down dale, through rainforest, across the first farm, through a creek crossing, until finally at the site.

Just like the majority of the other machinery on our farm Florrie came to us late in life, after she had already had a full career carrying stock.  But a quiet retirement was never to be had for Florrie, who commenced work with us way back in 1995. 

One of Florries first trips was out to visit me in Eromanga when I was governessing.  On this trip she acquired her first battle scar.  An air-conditioning vent that was located somewhere air-conditioning  was not meant to be.  This altercation with a fencepost also rendered the ‘step’ into the cab rather precarious.

This air-conditioning vent has only recently been rendered (literally) inoperable due to a threat of non compliance of the roadworthy type, and a tub  of bog.

Although Florrie plied the roads between The Head, Killarney, Toowoomba, Warwick and anywhere dad could sell timber or cattle,  it was on the Teviot Road she would really come into her own.

Driving down a road that is officially too steep to have bitumen on it, in a fully loaded *cough overloaded*, truck, with hot brakes and no heavy vehicle licence is an experience that either makes you or breaks you.

Florrie, you have carried cattle to the sale yards, logs out of the bush, cleared a farm, moved furniture, hay, tractors and junk.  You may have rust, falling  down roof lining and your very own eco system – but we couldn’t do it without you.

So Florrie – we salute you. 

Getting your Foot in the door... um er.... ground

Next step is to actually start with the action!  There are footing holes to be dug, for both the outer frame and then for the flooring.  We start with just the outer shed footing holes, otherwise the site would resemble Lightening Ridge - with bloody holes, bloody everywhere!

The footing holes were marked out, with precision and pink paint, by the trainee engineer.  The creative marketer wandered around and looked at things, and sighed when she had to hold a tape measure.

I am not sure how they do it in the construction industry, but I am pretty sure digging footings with a post hole digger is not doing things the easy way.  Easier than with just a post hole shovel - sure - but...

We hooked up the post hole digger to the old blue tractor.  Now a post hole digger should look like this:

It should go in the ground in a nice straight manner – and be pretty predictable as to where the hole you want is going to end up.

Unfortunately for us – that is not the case with our post hole digger.

Our digger looks more like this:

And operates in a manner similar to this:

So there is quite a bit of  “up a bit, down a bit – to the right.  Woo.  Nah back up a bit – that’s pretty close”

Which is ok when you are building a fence line, but not ideal when you are building a building.  And especially not great when your lead construction person needs to have things ‘square’ and your trades assistant is more the creative type than the exacting type.

Hmmm.

I think you can see where this is going.

So when the smoke cleared the footing holes have been dug.  There there was some swearing, but luckily the holes are wide so the inaccuracy of the inattentive creative type can be compensated.   They are also really deep which is a bit of over kill.  Totally over engineered is where we are trying to get to.

I loved seeing all that beautiful soil that came up on the auger.  Such a  rich chocolate  brown, really friable – with worms!  Gotta love a heathy eco-system.  It had that great smell as well, and made the job of clearing away the spoils not as bad as it could be.

I don’t think I could spend all day on the end of a shovel – but it was pretty fun.

A fine choice Madam

It might seem like all this has been a quick easy decision.

But let me tell you , there has been long protracted conversations, and plenty of research go into it.

Before Dad died, we talked about where we would put a little house – and how much that would cost and all the logistics.  But I was a bit reluctant, and there were bigger fish to fry at the time.  Mostly I was worried that he would spend the money and not have enough to live on.  You know how that goes.

So we considered Silver Line (made locally, reasonable price), we considered a removal home, we considered a shipping container(but not for too long) but nothing really felt.... right.

A while ago I went on a holiday to Japan, and spent a bit of time in Takayama.  I went to a folk village museum thing there – and fell in love with the idea of the barn/house/temple idea.  They seemed so safe and functional – and beautiful in a way.

I also talked a lot about the feeling of being in a hayshed.  I love that safe, quiet, warm feeling that comes from being inside a hayshed filled with straw/hay on a cool Killarney day.  Everything just feels ‘quiet’.   And if it is raining – you can really hear the rain on the tin roof.

It doesn’t’ really matter what the outside of the house looks like – it is more about the inside. I really love that whole idea of turning up somewhere and it not looking like much, but you get inside and there is comfy couches and fabulous sheets, great coffee, brilliant books and music and good food, wine and conversation.  I remember going to a place just like that when I was younger, and it really is a very fond memory indeed.  I wanted our place to feel like that.

Because I have a soft spot for shed/barn type constructions, and the boy LOVES a project -  we landed on a shed.  Not to mention that the price will be lower and we can make it just how we want.

There was plenty of talking about it, and research and price comparison and we settled on:

Stratco 13 x 7  gable homestead steel shed.   In deep ocean if you are wondering.

It is the biggest non commercial shed they make.  We went to buy it from the stratco just near us in Brisbane – and the salesperson was NOT expecting us to ask for that.  Perhaps we look more like the lawn locker type!

The boy did the wheel and deal, and before you know it we had paid for the start of our house (on our credit card) and it was being delivered to Killarney Autoworks.

Another step completed!

Location, Location, Location

So the first thing was to choose a site.  On 550 acres it was always going to be a challenge, but the majority of the land is steep.

Really steep.  (Somewhere in here is where the forever boy will explain something about gradients and 5:1 or 3:1 – but I don’t know much about that).  And then there is the rain forest, the lack of road etc etc.

We did choose a house site that will be for the next ‘proper house’.  I have a vision of a Glenn Murcott house, and it will probably have to be flown in by chopper, with access points by funicular railway. 


But until I get a much fancier job, we win the lotto or they discover gas on our place, we can’t really build there.


So we decided to err on the side of easiest to access.  At the moment the easiest site still involves a 2.8 km drive across country with no real road, and with a bridge that used to be there before the floods.  Yes both of them.  The crossing now looks like this:

And needs a sign that says this:

Which is of course ALL OF THE TIME!

We decided to put the shelter in the location of the original hut.  The land has been selectively logged since the white man has been in the area – and more often than not the camp would be in this little ‘dell’.


It is near the creek, quite flat, and warmer and less windy than the majority of the easily accessible sites.  It will be quite dark quite early in the winter time, but the soil is good and should be able to grow herbs and some food as long as the wallabies don’t eat it all.


There was of course – some heated “discussion”  between the trainee engineer and the creative marketer as to the best situation within that location.


It went something like this:


Marketer:  *sweeps back hair and stares into the middle distance*  I NEED the verandah to be here.  Otherwise there is no point even building anything! *stamps foot*


Trainee Engineer:  *looks around at topography, scouts foundation area, licks finger and sticks it up in the wind* That presents some construction challenges that will incur financial and timeline penalties.


Marketer: *pouts* Oh what is the point then!  We might as well just go home!


Trainee Engineer:  Don’t be ridiculous.  We can still put it here, we just need to have it somewhere that is relatively flat so we don’t have to do too much earthworks.  We can’t have more than a 17mm fall over the site or it will be more expensive and more difficult.


Marketer:  But I NEED the view... *tears*


Trainee Engineer:  (sees this is going downhill quick)  Don’t worry.  Let’s build it, and I will GET you the view.


(The creative marketer in no way condes the use of emotional blackmail to get what you want) (This may or may not be a true representation of what actually occurred)


So in the showery easterly weather, we peg out our new home.  With a northerly aspect, and with a view of Mt Superbus that we will ‘get’.

When we rebuild the bridge it will be easy to get to, it will be warm and it will be safe.  And unless the north branch of the river suddenly changes its thousand year behaviour, very dry as well.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago...

I grew up in a small town.  And not just "one high school and know people at the supermarket, 10,000 people" small - but small.  A village really.


You know the kind - not a one horse town, but certainly a one pub town. Which in Australia is the more important measure.


In my town – there is a mountain and a road named after my family.  I can trace my ancestors back to the founding of the town, my parents were foundation members of the local financial institution, my sister is on the board for the local hospital.


Not the type of place I could be anonymous.


So like many middle class rural kids, I got out of town, I did my time at boarding school, on cattle stations and cotton farms,  went overseas, spent 7 years away, went to uni, finally got a real job, and met the forever boy.


Then my Dad died.  And I inherited the farm.  Not just any piece of land that you could just trade away, or forget about.  But a farm that has been in my family for generations.


A place that had been selectively logged by my Dad, grazed by my uncle, owned by my great uncle and worked by another one. Land that sustained families in the depression, and in the worst drought in white history.   A section of Queensland where cedar trees were procured from – cedar that was sent back to England for parlour furniture and ladies dressing tables.  Land that sits up underneath a mountain that forms part of the Great Dividing Range, a small area where a microcosm of ecodiversity exists unlike any other in Australia.  Country that is millions of years old, that we are now custodians of.


Time to be responsible. 


Inheriting the  farm is full of challenges and great opportunity.  The country is so amazing, but needs constant attention.  Gum trees never sleep, and the land is only useful if it is producing.  So we really need to be there. 


On the farm there are fences, and yards and trees (and blackberries, tobacco bush, fireweed) and Pat’s cattle.  No where to sleep, or cook or wash.


I reckon we are going to need a house.