I think I'd be putting something over that hole in the drain cover…but I guess that could mean you have a dozen snakes queued up at it in the morning…[emoji53]
We arrived at the farm just after lunch on the Monday.
We towed the scaffold tower and a load more wood up with us.
First job was to clad the end section of the veranda roof.
We set the tower up.
And clad the end.
Staircase next.
My boss wanted to use the flight he found in the river at the bottom.
We marked and drilled the holes for the cypress pine posts.
With the posts clamped in position to form the landing/platform, I could mark out the string for the next staircase.
We then went up to the shed to machine the strings.
I used a circular saw and chisel to rebate the strings for the treads.
Cut, glued and screwed all the treads in position.
We then got it into position.
We had to adjust the holes slightly to get the posts in the perfect position.
We then concreted them in position.
We had lots of problems through out the week with sheep escaping and getting into the neighbors property who had just spent a lot of money on plants for their garden.
This meant I got to ride the little 250cc Suzuki to help round them up, which was awesome fun!! I loved it!
Back on the tree house build............................
We fitted hardwood boards on the landing.
We then did some work on the interior as it started raining.
Mezzanine next.
Screwed some 4" x 2" oak along the walls.
We could then fit some joists.
And mark where the tree needed cutting.
My boss, Alan, then cut the top off the tree.
Safety first!
First chunk off.
Next chunk.
Off.
Michael and I then marked and cut the tree so that a floor joist would fit neatly into it.
All the joists in.
Pine tongue and groove floor boards next.
Alan found out a 100+ year old ladder which we thought would look great as the ladder up to the mezzanine.
With the rain gone we ventured back outside to finish the veranda roof.
Fitted the High Lift jack, gallows brackets.
Followed by rafter and hip timbers.
We could then finish cladding the roof in the tin sheets.
We fitted a piece of oak with a hole through the middle, for the top of the firemans pole to mount to.
We needed to clad the end section of roof above the firemans pole.
I used a plumb bob to accurately mark the ground where the firemans pole would go.
We fitted an OZ Pig in the corner.
And used a plumb bob again to mark the roof where the hole needed drilling for the chimney.
Michael used a hole saw to make the hole in the roof.
For the chimney we had brought with us 2 lengths of exhaust pipe which we had flared the ends and painted black.
We siliconed on a piece of lead to seal the hole in the roof and I fitted a piece of alluminium I bent up, to keep the rain out.
Alan cut a tree down which was right in the middle of where the new handrail would be going.
Back to the firemans pole.......................
We could now drill the hole in the ground ready to concrete the pole in position.
Done!
We fitted an old chandelier.
I made a bracket to secure the old ladder in position.
We screwed some tin sheets behind the OZ Pig to ensure the ply wood walls dont get scorched.
A few daylight pics the next morning.
I fitted the handrails.
4x2 oak with all the corners planed off, with a piece of 2x1 screwed along the bottom. The 2x1 is to mount all the upright spindles to, which will be made out of pieces of branch/log and screwed to the 2x1.
We were joined by this friendly and colorful little fella.
Alan finally got all the lights working.
Alan and Peter got to work drilling the holes for the cypress pine posts at the bottom of the stairs.
While I carried on fitting the handrails.
A bit more trimming of the cut off tree was necessary.
I used Peters awesome cordless electric chain saw to trim up the last bit so that the handrail would fit snugly into the tree.
Handrails fitted.
Gate next, which just happened to be the perfect size!
Fitted a handrail on the mezzanine.
We brought a chair up and found a nice old wire basket for fire wood.
Last job was to trim the table on the veranda.
First Alan took the front edge off to give a bit more room for walking along the deck.
And then I re-cut the top to get it nice and level.
Its the perfect height to sit your drink on!
We cleaned up and packed the 60 ready to leave.
I then took a few last pics as I probably wont be back for a while!
Spotted this cute little guy while doing a final check for escaped sheep before leaving.
And finally after 4 ridiculously long days the 60 was packed and we were on our way.
Its been one hell of a journey! We spent 7 days straight on the road, driving up and down. Everything went smoothly even when we got caught up in a bush fire which jumped the Hume motorway right in front of us and amazingly all the fish survived being in minimal water for 50 hours and being bounced around in a car for over 20!
Busy trying to get the house and garage unpacked and sorted at the moment.
During my last week of work I finished building the gate for the side of my bosses house and installed it.
The frame.
The gate.
Clad it in hardwood planks.
Fitted.
I made a gate for the tree house that will be fitted in front of the firemans pole to guard against people accidentally falling.
Bent some 25mm tube.
Worked the hinges out.
Got it electro plated.
I had to modify another Warn 8274 High Mount winch.
TIG welded some chunks of alluminium on.
A quick lick of paint and it was ready to reassemble.
Cut some M12 all thread and hose.
I made some more Jeep Wrangler battery trays.
Bec baked another yummy chocolate cake for me to take in and share with everyone at Piranha on my last day.
I'm really going to miss this place!
The last 2.5 years have been an absolute blast and it has without doubt been the best job I've ever had, if you can really call it a job!
But nothing lasts forever and for me to be able to live the sort of lifestyle I want, Melbourne's climate and weather just isnt suitable!
So it was time to make the big move up to Queensland!
I finished work at 4pm and picked up the biggest truck Budget have in their fleet.
With help from my now ex workmate we had the truck loaded in a few hours.
We left at 4am the next morning to start our huge 3600 km truck journey.
The truck was very easy to drive out on the open road, but it desperately needed a 7th gear as with the accelerator pushed all the way to the floor it would cruise at 104kmh, which was perfect as legally I was only allowed to do 100 anyway, so we just did the whole trip at 104. But another gear would have been nice to bring the revs down a bit and use less fuel.
We headed inland up the Newel Highway on the way up. It wasnt a bad road, with long straights and virtually no hills!
Fuel stops were a regular thing as we never knew how long it would be until we would see another. Sometimes it would be 100k's+.
Our average fuel price was $1.22 or £0.59 in my old money, so pretty bloody cheap compared to UK prices!
In total we used about $1100 to go up and down in the truck!
The ultra high flow pumps made quick work of pumping it into the tank!
We drove for 14 hours the first day, then stayed in a motel. Then the next day we drove for another 7.
And finally we got to the new house!
We unloaded the truck that afternoon/evening.
Then the next day we set off again to drive back to Melbourne.
We decided to come back the other way, down the coast to Sydney, then back to Melbourne along the Hume highway.
The Pacific Highway just North of Sydney is an engineering marvel! The road builders have cut straight through mountain after mountain and moved millions of tons of rock!
13 hours behind the wheel saw us get just past Sydney. We stayed in another motel for the night and then hit the road early the next morning.
It was a hot day with high winds and as we drove along the Hume we began to see smoke in the distance.
Soon we found ourselves in the middle of a bushfire!
It had reached the highway and jumped across to the other side! The fire brigades were there tackling it but we wouldn't see any police to control the traffic for over an hour! This meant that the traffic just kept coming and it was chaos with the fire brigade stopping people from trying to get through!
We parked up and watched the action unfold!
The CFA had issued a warning for the town advising it was too late to leave!
Soon their was a roar in the sky as water bombing planes began coming in and dropping huge quantities of water on the fire in a bid to save the town and the highway!
Eventually the police turned up and moved everyone on.
We had to drive through the fire threatened town and in land to loop around the fire and re-join the Hume further West.
As we drove through the town a lot of the residents were stood outside their homes, clearly terrified, watching the huge smoke clouds, praying the fire wouldn't destroy their town.
Finally we were back on the Hume heading for Melbourne!
In typical Melbourne style it was raining again!
But we had done it!
4 days, 3600ks, 44 hours of driving, truck loaded and unloaded, job done!
We stayed the night at the old house and in the morning we cleaned it top to bottom and returned the keys to the real estate agent.
Then it was time to drive our 2 blue Toyota's up to the new house!
We put the fish in bags with minimal water inside an esky/cool box on Bec's front seat and left the bags open and the lid off the esky.
I picked up a handheld UHF radio out of the showroom at Piranha before I left, so that Bec could keep in constant contact with me.
And we hit the road.
We drove for 4 hours the first day as we didnt leave Melbourne until 3pm.
We arrived at the Victoria/New South Wales border which is divided by the huge Murray River.
We decided to stay at the Time Out camp site on the Victorian side.
We had to cross over a railway track which I could see went down to a pretty spectacular looking old bridge, but more on that later.
There was a myriad of 4wd tracks along the banks of the river that we saw as we drove to the campsite, and we could have just camped here quite easily and for free. But we decided it would be better to pay $30 and have a nice piece of cut and watered grass and proper toilets and showers.
We had the whole un-powered section to ourselves.
All that separated us and the river was a big levy.
As we got setup and began to think about dinner we were joined by lots of roos, keen to graze on the grass!
While Bec sat back and relaxed.
I cooked our dinner.
Yummy salmon and mash.
It began getting dark and then the strangest thing happened, something neither of us had ever experienced before.
The sky began lighting up as if it was morning time and the sun was about to rise.
We were then treated to the most amazing sunset! It was breath taking!
The next morning we awoke to find ourselves surrounded again by grazing roos.
I made breakfast.
Just as we were about to eat breakfast we were lucky enough to witness something not many people will ever see in the wild.
A koala walked through our camp site carrying her baby on her back.
She then began to climb a tree.
Then the father appeared and walked over and after a bit of growling, climbed another tree opposite them!
It was an incredible experience and we were very lucky to see them on the ground like that as normally you only see them high up in the trees!
We left them to have a sleep in the trees and enjoyed our breakfast next to the river, watched over by singing birds.
We packed up and drove out of the camp and stopped on the way to look at the bridge.
We crossed back over into New South Wales and continued on up the Newel Highway.
We drove through many towns along the way and one even had a full size tank which I thought was pretty cool.
I liked this and I think its true! "With Passion Anything Is Possible"
A quick lunch stop.
By 6pm we had been on the road for over 8 hours and decided to call it a day.
We tried to find a camp spot in a national park I spotted on the map.
After driving for half an hour and not spotting any where we decided to head back to the highway and find some where in a little town we passed through.
The young guy on the counter at the camp site was really friendly and said as it looked like it was going to rain we could park under the shelter/camp kitchen in the unpowered camping area.
So I decided to set the tent up under it and got dinner on.
Lamb shanks and mash.
And of course ice cold beers out of the Engel.
The next morning.
Yummy sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches again.
Then we were on the road again for the final 8.5 hours of driving.
Past lots more grain silos and trains picking it up.
And finally we were back in sunny Queensland!
Funny sign!
Saw my first Tesla on the road!
Finally almost back in the beautiful Gold Coast hinterland!
Both Toyotas obviously performed faultlessly for the entire journey!
Although I definitely need to fit stiffer springs in the rear and need to get the aircon install finished!
We were completely exhausted as we had now been on the road for 7 days driving huge distances, but the first thing that needed doing was the fish as they had now been in the bags for 50 hours and bounced around in a car for over 20!
The tank fitted nicely in Bec's boot.
I half filled the aquarium with water and floated the bags the fish were in, in the water for half an hour to get them used to the temp of their new water.
Then released them.
They were a bit shell shocked for the first 12 hours. But as soon as I added all their ornaments, plants and more water they perked right up and were back to normal.
I'm amazed we didnt lose any!
The house and the garage were obviously a complete mess with boxes everywhere!
I was keen to crack on and get the garage/my workshop sorted!
Certainly the poshest one I've ever had what with plastered walls, coving and even an electric door!
Sadly its a bit smaller than I need and with no shed its been a bit of a nightmare trying to fit everything in!
But I got there in the end.
I got some lights wired up over my benches.
One thing I'm totally stoked about is the fact I found LJ fits in, with the roof rack removed!
And theres still plenty of room for motorbike storage and to work!
So were in!
And just in time for Christmas!
I cooked Bec and I a yummy Christmas dinner with Beef, turkey, pigs in blankets, yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and veggies. Was delicious!
And Bec made an amazing trifle.
It was a lovely quiet Christmas together and the weather was fantastic!
Tomorrow I fly down to Melbourne to drive the Astra up. I will sit on 115kmh the whole way and just pull over and sleep in the car when I'm tired, for a few hours then carry on. So will be back the following day.
Then were off to my beloved Byron for a few days of camping, relaxing and partying to celebrate the new year.
Then I suppose I should probably find a job if I'm to buy myself a motorbike, a jetski a puppy and a wedding at the end of the year.
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