Sunday 26th April: a year and a day since moving up here

Yeah, I moved up here last ANZAC Day. Time has evaporated. Anyhoo, today was a glorious Northern Rivers day, so I packed up the boys (see postings below) in the Vitara and headed across to Bangalow where the market was on today. I also visited this market after dropping Steve off at Coolangatta Airport 12 months ago as he headed back to Newcastle while I started living the rainbow life up here, so it was kinda apt to do it again. We met up with Glen, who had dropped his friend Ian (see posting below) off at Ballina airport at 9am, and spent a few hrs wandering around, watching the people, the buskers and looking at all the wondrous arts, crafts, food and produce. Oh and eating scrummy food and drinking sugar cane juice with a touch of ginger. This guys and girl were excellent performers.Looking across the crowd: colourful marquees, people of all different shapes and sizes, colours and genders. And most with mobile phones.

I made two purchases to mark my one year anniversary: this exquisite gecko and

this painting calld The Peace House. Nice hey. Now where to hang it."Ollie, hand me that stud finder".

ANZAC Day/ Night

Glen brought his friend, Ian, from Melbourne round late yesterday arvie for a BBQ dinner. Lamb chops, steak, sausages; Ollie cooked his onions perfectly; and Andrej made a tasty salad. We sat around, drank beer and laughed. And when it got a bit too cool we came inside and at chocolates. Steve, you may have noticed, is absent. He has been down south visiting friends and family in Sydney, Central Coast and Newcastle.

Earlier on in the day, Andrej and Ollie got to know Rita and did some lawn mowing. Rule No. 1: Always wear the farmer's hat whenever on Rita. Being obedient German lads, they did what they were told. Not sure about the lack of shoes, however.

Ollie looking like an old pro. Well, you know what I mean.

Vale Bea Arthur

Sad to learn that Bea Arthur died from cancer today. We loved her as Dorothy in the Golden Girls and Steve and I saw her perform in her one woman show during a Mardu Gras festival some years ago and she was bare foot and brilliant.

If you paint the deck boys, you get to enjoy the spa

And this kind of promise seems to have done the trick. Here's Andrej and Ollie applying the second coat of paint to the deck yesterday (Saturday/ANZAC Day) morning. And a nice job they did, too. Please note the bowling green-like lawn in the background.

And here they are late Sunday afternoon, knocking back a beer and enjoying the sinking sun in 39.4 degrees bubbly warmth.

Ollie seems to find working here at Maryville enjoyable. The guys head to Nimbin for the weekend for Mardi Grass (a festival and street parade in Nimbin without drag queens or boys in party shorts...go figure...)

Andrej and Ollie say g'day

Meet Andrej (on the left) and Ollie, two Help_X visitors staying with us for the next week or so from Germany. I thought a few of you who read the blog might enjoy this pic for its compositional qualities, espec. Libby McD! The boys are looking very pleased with themselves because they painted the first coat on the deck. The electricians were here and connected the power so tomorrow we shall know whether the spa is working. Perhaps another pic might be in order. Why don't you let me know through your comments - just click the bottom right corner to add your comment.

It might look rather fabulous..but

it's anything but when you're suffering from its effects of the nasty thing. I'm feeling yucky, glugged up as I am with the cold (yes this is a representation of the common cold virus). You know how sometimes you know exactly when it is starting to effect you...I was walking between plumbing and wall hooks in Bunnings last Thursday at about 12 noon when I thought 'hmmm I think I might be getting a cold'....by Saturday afternoon the tell tale signs were all there and by Sunday I was a shuffling stick of nasal mucous (much nicer than snot)....Had to take yesterday and today off work, but should be right to go tomorrow. Anyway, that's the excuse for not blogging for a while...I was too busy trying to unblog (boom tish) my nose!

The weekend that was

Friends visited us over the weekend, Leonard, from Sydney, who took the pics and so therefore remains anonymous for the time being, and Warren from Newcastle. The weather has been pretty ordinary up here since before easter but it fined up for the weekend, though back to ordinary today (Tuesday). Here is Glen, who now regards 'Maryville' as his 'weekender', me and Warren enjoying a hearty country breakfast cooked up by Steve with some help from the girls (our chooks).

The night before we enjoyed a roasted pork meal cooked up by me. Here Warren and I are waiting for something to happen. Note the glass in Warren's hand.

And here we are in Nimbin, where the Mardi Grass is about to occur in a couple of weeks time. "Cooky.....you want cooky?"

Through a stranger's eyes

Or at least a visitor's eyes, but 'stranger's eyes' is a tad more dramtic, don't ou think? Anyhoo, a shot of the the post boxes at the bottom of our paddock, with ours being the modest blue one on the left. We drive past this daily, but I've never thought of it as an interesting photo. Leonard did, however.

Kath Day-Knight might call it The Good Room

Steve should be justly proud of his work last week in painting our formal living area which is where our baby grand sits, now quite majestically. All we have left to do now is hang our art on the walls.

Our friend, Leonard, who stayed with us over the past weekend took these shots as well as played the piano magically.

Coucal courtship

We live in a bit of a pheasant coucal hotspot. We often hear there hooping calls late in the afternoon or see them awkwardly flying from one side of our property to the other. They remind me of the prehistoric archeopteryx. Anyway, while having breakfast this morning we saw this coucal fly on to this old grevillea and begin courting. Soon he was joined by the female and they both displayed to each other before the female decided he just wasn't quite good enough and flew away.

Lifting the Spa on to the Deck

So the problem was simple. How do we hoist this spa (weighing in at about 180kgs) up on to the deck and into position? It was also raining quite hard, at least to start with.

We managed to slide it along and then lift it up on an angle until it rested on the edge of the deck, before all getting behind it and shoving it all the way on to the deck.

Because the deck was so slippery after all the rain it was a relatively simple matter of then sliding it across to the far end.

Some very happy and satisfied men...me, Paul, Steve, John and Edward.

Spa now in position. Electrician now has to connect the power to it, we fill it up and then we hope to be soaking in it. But of course it probably won't work and will need some kind of costly repair...but we'll see. Thanks Julie for the action shots.

Easter Monday lunch

Today was a special day. And to mark it we had a special lunch. Paul, seated front left, submitted his PhD thesis a few weeks ago. John (seated back right) and I supervised him. Paul recently scored a research position in Manchester so he and his wife Kell (seated next to Paul) drove up from Newcastle so we could celebrate the completion of the PhD and the new job. So in the pic are Paul, Kell, Steve, John, John's son, Edward, visiting from Canberra and Julie, who is married to John. John and I were at Newcastle together and now John is Professor and Head of School at Southern Cross. It was a great day and even though the rain was relentless we also managed to.... (see posting above this one for continuity)

Building the Deck#4

This is where we began Good Friday morning. We had to drill each nail hole and then hammer in the nails so it was slow and tedious progress...took us most of the day to complete all the decking timber.

Glen came over just before lunch and helped us. He commented that he 'felt quite butch doing all this building work'. Yes, quite.

And this is how it looked by Saturday morning. Our progress was also slowed because of the constant wet weather we've had over the easter weekend. We had hoped to have painted it but was not to be.

My first pecan pie

Baked this on Saturday...quite tasty...did a bit of cooking over the easter weekend: this pie, a banana passionfruit yogurt cake and a bunch of hot crossed buns....one failuer outta three isn't too bad

shoe toad, shoo

This was a mistake - I could spin a story that I had a toad in both my shoes, but nah, I just made a mistake uploading the pics. Looks kinda interesting though doesn't it. Anyway, this did cause an icky moment this morning (Easter Monday). I slid my foot in my shoe and felt a lump which I thought was a sock. I put my fingers in to pull it out and felt spongy, clammy, icky stuff..so I squealed. Like a girl. And then out popped the toad. Moral: always check shoes, boots and gloves for creatures of the wild before slipping your foot or hand in them.

Country Whinge (the second in an irregular series)

Only in America, of course. But, the reason for the image is that living in the country means driving along country roads. Which means every so often you make a contribution to road kill statistics. So, we were driving down Cawongla Road around 5.30pm last evening (Saturday) on our way to Glen's place at Dunoon when a red necked wallaby hurled itself in front of us, smashed up the front plastics that masquerades as a bumper bar and then tumbled (hopefully by now, lifelessly) under the car and out the back end. This is my 3rd wallaby in the twelve months I've been living here. It's not that I don't like wallabies. I do. I think they are very cute. It's just that they have absolutely no idea that if they hop out into the middle of the road from the safety of the roadside verge they will die.

Bromeliads starting to flower

These guys seem to be enjoying the wet weather and living under the shade of one of our mango trees.

Deck Building #4: Sunday

Hmmm I still haven't got the hang of posting pics in the right order so we are kinda going backwards here. So by about 5.00pm we had reached the stage of nailing the decking timber on to the joists. Here I am drilling the holes for the nails first, which makes for a much more pleasurable nailing experience for all concerned.

All the joists have now been nailed in and we've carted down some of the decking timber and placed it on the joists.

OK, so today, like yesterday was abit showery. And the red clayey soil was more clay than soil. And I'm hot. And it's humid. And my clothes are detriorating with all this outside work!

A pic across the deck. By the end of the week all the decking timber will be nailed on and hopefully, depending on the weather, it will be painted. Whethere we've managed to work out how to lug the very weighty spa on to the deck by that stage is another story...

Deck Building #3 Saturday

Our timber arrived on Friday which meant we could spend the weekend bolting on the bearers and nailing on the joists. This is where we ended up on Saturday afternoon. All the posts had been bolted into the footings and the bearers bolted on.

Steve chiselling out a housing for one of the bearers. He keeps his face covered now since it was disfigured from a nasty incident with three magpies and a brush turkey. Just kidding.

Things starting to take shape.

Steve looking under the house which is now free of its lattice cladding and snake netting. I kid you not, black netting had been put up by one set of owners sometime in the house's history to try and deter snakes from taking up residence.

Eight inches in a week

Since last weekend we've recorded 200mm (8 inches) so we're a bit on the wet side up here. Our creek broke its banks on Friday and as you can see from the pic above it flowed with a fair bit of force over this once tall grass about a metre above the bank.

Our quiet swimming hole is now rather turbd and rough, though the water level is dropping quickly.

This is what we cae home to on Friday. This is the bridge over Leycester Creek which forms part of our boundary. The only way to our house is over this bridge, and you can see that the creek was almost over it. Infact it had risen over it during Friday but by the time we came home it had dropped to being just under it.

We didn't know whether we should have stayed at home on Friday because even at 7.15am as we drove over the bridge, the creek was quite high. Luckily the creek rose and then fell away in a matter of a few hours.

Splatttttttt

you should have seen what the car looked like