Australia 2012 – Weeks 3 & 4

Since the Turner's got on the train, I've been making the house more to my liking...Organizing foodstuffs, clearing cobwebs, mopping floors, cleaning the pantry and kitchen cabinets, relocating lights, messing around to get the electrical system to run right, etc...I even washed the downstairs windows inside and out, made the dining room doors secure and, GASP, I washed the van, in and out...I just had to...Just had to...No rap on the Turner's, they have a busy active family of six and Lord knows they have their hands full...I just need to get things "my way" for the rest of the time I'm here...

 (above)  A stitched together panorama of the kitchen swinging to the living room...Concrete countertops, and Jensen inspired cabinet doors up high...

  (above)  Overexposed panorama of the living room...That desk is where I spend the early mornings and late evening...

  (above)  A very functional kitchen...Two sinks, generous countertops, tile floor, propane stove...

  (above)  Deep double basin sink with a cast-in-place drainboard on the right side...

  (above)  Stainless steel oven and cooktop...

(above)  See-through pantry with every organic grain imaginable...

 (above)  Behind the kitchen is the mud-room / laundry room...I like the rough board workbench with a vise on the side...

(above)  Precast and polished concrete stairs lead up...SOLID...

  (above)  Before he left, Andrew made a cardboard template for the stainless steel fabricator to use to make the composting toilet insert...A 55 gallon barrel is under and outside the house...The drop is about six feet and there is absolutely no odor inside...Fresh air is unobstructed around the barrel...To use it you 'do your thing' then drop a bout a quart of sawdust on top of it...Later the barrel gets moved to the huge compost pile and gets mixed in with th other organics that accumulate from the rest of the farm...Efficient...

  (above)  Morning light on the locally harvested gum wood floor...

  (above)  I'm cooking meals now...Usually just one a day...It feels right...In the bowl are cabbage, beets, onions, garlic and spices...On the side is home made bread, avocado and local cheese...At the end of the day, it tastes pretty good...

 (above)  The view from the living room looking west just before sunset...

I've also been working up in the shop building screens for the windows and figuring out all that's there in the shop...I've scheduled a hollow surfboard workshop for early December so I need to get all that stuff sorted out before then...

More later…

 October 11, 2012

(above)  Saturday, October 6...Pre-dawn...Time to get caught up on the news, check e-mail and edit pictures...

(above) As I was about to go up to the shed, I saw another resident of the house...

(above)  The shed, sorted out and ready for me to build window screens for the house...

(above) I have fourteen screens to build...Lots of cutting the first day, then I'll build a few each day, it takes about a half hour to assemble each screen...

(above)  Monday I was all set to get started working on that house in Wauchope…...That mudbrick house I'll be painting...But as commonly happens here, something goes haywire...At 7AM I had the van packed up with tools, ladders, buckets, brooms, drop cloths, etc…When I went to start the van, it just went click-click-click-click...The sound of a battery too weak to turn over the motor...You could've heard me swear all the way down in Sydney...

So I did the seven minute walk to the shed to find the battery charger...I haven't seen it since I've been here, but Andrew said before he left that it was in there...

I looked, and looked, and looked...Eureka, I found it...A big heavy black gizmo with a plug in for the wall and a pair of heavy duty jumper cables attached...looking at my watch I thought I might still make it to Wauchope on time...!!!...

After finding the charger I walk back down the hill, stopping a few times to change hands because cause the thing is heavy...

I go into the house, plug in a long cord and go to the van anticipating that after a short charge and I'll be on my way...I look for a switch on the charger to set the voltage right for the van battery, then I realized I just brought the portable welder down...Again I could be heard, this time in Brisbane...!!!...

Another walk up the hill, look deeper in the shed, still no charger...Next I then went to Till and Annette's to see if they might know where it is...Nope...

Another walk down the hill and a call Rob, Andrew's brother...I explain the situation to him, and at this point I think there is something wrong with the starter...Rob says the van gets serviced at a garage in Wauchope, 25 miles away...He says he will call the shop to get on their repair schedule...Now I just need to figure a way to get it there...I remember that Andrew has the Australian version of AAA...What level of service, I have no idea...So I call, go through the phone tree options, get put on hold, then eventually get to a real person...I give the important info about make, model, location, and “yes my name is Andrew”, my card number is 567345...The lady on the phone says to expect the service truck within the hour...By now it's 8:30, the time I was to start work...So I call the homeowner and leave a message explaining what's going on...

Next, the service truck driver calls on the Turner's internet phone line (they have a local only phone too)...(The internet phone is for out of area calls, the outside of area calls are quite pricey)...But the phone volume on the internet phone is really weak...I struggle to hear the driver, but I tell, no I yell into the phone, where the vehicle is...I hope he heard it...Now I wait…

Next I call the garage, on the local phone line, and they said Rob called and they are expecting to see the van and will deal with whatever...Good…

I didn't look at my watch when I called AAA, but after what I thought was about an hour, I called AAA back and told the operator that I would go up to the road to be sure the driver found the place...Another walk then another half hour goes by...So I walk back to the house and the phone rings…The driver calls saying he is 150 meters away and where is that van...???...Whew...

In a minute or two here comes the truck down the red soil path...The service guy is an old school Aussie...He has me try to start the van, and it just click-click-clicks...He goes back to the truck and gets his battery jumper pack, hooks it up and, voila, click-click-click...So he goes back and brings another battery, hooks the two together and, and, and it starts...Yay.!!!...He has me hold the revs to 2,000 RPM for a few minutes while he puts his stuff away then has me turn the motor off and see if it will start again...It does...I told him that the van has only gone up and down the hill between the shed and the house in the past week...He says that is really draining on the battery...It needs to run for at least ten to fifteen minutes regularly...I say I'm going to Wauchope and he thinks it should be fine...I hope so...

So I head down to Wauchope, do a few errands, get lost looking for a steel fabrication shop (I left the GPS in the house, grrr), and I went to Port Macquarie to Bunnings, their Home Depot, where I bough some painting supplies...

Then it’s back to Wauchope where I got food and fuel...I went looking for the house I’ll be painting based on memory and couldn't find it...

By now I'm having what I would call a bad day and really wished to either be home with Pam, or have her here for support...I got through it, but as I said, it was a bad day...

(above) Tuesday...On the road again...

(above) It's all down hill to Wauchope...

(above)  The fish hook turn...This part of the road is steep...

(above) Tuesday went fine...The van started, I found the steel shop, found the house, got set-up and spent the warm windy day scrubbing the outside of the house...The paint will be here Thursday they say...I’ll have some carpentry jobs the homeowners want me to do too…Good, I like to be productive… The house seems bigger in daylight than I remember when Andrew and I saw it the first time in the evening light...It should be an interesting place to spend the days...

(above)The back of the house...It's really a very nice home...

(above) Looking the other way into the back yard...

(above) Off the dining room is the covered porch...Perfect for those warm sunny days...

So, that's been what it's like for me the past couple days...Bad then good...Overall yesterday felt lonely trying to deal with things not going right...I got through it but felt emotionally drained...Today everything went right...My sweet disposition has been reset...

(above) Wednesday morning sunrise...

The paint for the house wasn't going to there, so the homeowner said wait a day...I worked on screens instead...

 Thursday...I went to Wauchope and worked inside doing pre-paint prep work...Mudbrick (AKA: adobe) requires vastly different prep work than convectional houses...Master mudbrick builder Graham Pill is helping with the prep work and has taken the time to explain to me the details that matter when it comes to working on these types of building...Thank you Graham...!!!...(BTW: Graham is 71 years of age and the Australia National Triathlon Champion for his age group...!!!)

(above) Thursday evening sunset...

(above) The painted sky...

(above)  Another awesome sunset...

More later…

October 12, 2012

You figure it out...

 (above) My bookmark, a photo of the door to my live-in, Malibu, circa 1980...

More later…

October 17, 2012

 (above) I've settled into a morning ritual, here with this...

(above)  While having my coffee, this dingo/wild dog mix breed wandered by...

  (above)  These days the drive to Wauchope is becoming routine...Today I was reminded that this was (is?) a timber center of this side of Australia...When the truck went over the bridge, you could see the bridge flex...

  (above) After work, I was back at Till and Annette's to brew some beer...Till made the fire ring and benches yesterday...We had dinner there last night...

  (above)  And for the kids, he made this sand-box...The corners of the box are notched and pinned together with wood rods...

  (above)  A decent six-pack of beer costs $18.99 up here...A similar 5 gallons of home brew costs $13.99...You do the math...

We used filtered spring water for our first batch...

  (above) Big kettle on the stove...Beer concentrate waiting for the water to boil...

  (above)  The contents of the can, the beer concentrate, gets added to water and a kilo of sugar...

  (above)  More water is added, then yeast activates the batch...Let if sit and let the yeast convert the sugar to alcohol for a week, then bottle...Wait ten days and enjoy...

  (above) The sunrise the next day is another original masterpiece...

  (above) Back to work...For three days I've gone around the house and cleared out the crumbling edges of the mud-brick where it adjoins the timber framing...The wood was green when it was built and since then has shrunk away from the bricks...I fill in those gaps with a sand, clay, lime and liquid bonding mix...That goes into the cracks with a wide putty knife, then smoothed with a sponge...

  (above)  Everyday, the homeowner sets up something like this for Graham and me...Nice...

  (above) After work it's back to the Comboyne...I've been into building stuff mode...The easy builds are some side tables...I found the nicest old crates, cleaned them up and added on top some rough edge granite slabs...

  (above)  And another one on this side...

  (above) Three evening's projects...

  (above) Leather hand bag...

  (above) Leather shoulder bag...

  (above) Wood box...

  (above) The knife gives a sense of size...

  (above) Sanded to 600, oiled with orange/eucalyptus oil, the waxed with beeswax...

  (above) The stool is my work table...

 (above) This is interesting...Andrew made this "Rocket Stove'...The fire is built on the lower left side, the heat from the fire goes through a looping stainless steel pipes built into the bench...The bench heats up...The heat then goes up through the rusty steel pipe on top of the fire box, which also radiates heat into the room...Finally the exhaust goes out the wall...

More later... 

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